Reading Notes #558

It is time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you have interesting content, share it!

Databases

• Introducing GitHub Copilot for Azure Data Studio (Drew Skwiers-Koballa) - That's such a great idea! I spend less time writing queries than I used to. This will help save time remembering the schema and other quick things.

Programming

• Introducing Dev Home (Kayla Cinnamon) - Very excited by the potential of DevHome.It was announced at Build and it's looking great already. As Kayla talked about it I installed it from the store. A project to watch for sure.

• 8 Free and Open Source Blazor UI Libraries (Claudio Bernasconi ) - Wow! I didn't know so many free and great libraries existed!

• Announcing an update for .NET Upgrade Assistant with a new CLI tool! - .NET Blog (Olia Gavrysh) - An interesting tool indeed! Would be if we could do the same to upgrade the packages.

LowCode

• Create a Microsoft Power App for your ASP.NET Core Web API - Visual Studio Blog (Julia Kasper) - This is an excellent tutorial to build a mobile app without code and using an API as a source of data.

• What’s new: Power Apps May 2023 Feature Update (Clay Wesener) - That month was packed! I need to try these new features.

• Transforming Excel into Power Apps: A Game-Changer with Microsoft's CoPilot AI (Shane Young) - Hopefully this will helps a few people to move out of Excel. Because yes there is a time for that.

• More power with pipelines in Power Platform (Anthony Sheehi,) - Next deployment new feature in the Pipeline. There are also a few video references to learn more about it.

• Power Apps is empowering coders with next-generation AI capabilities (Ryan Cunningham,) - So many mind-blowing new capabilities! Copilot's presence will really change the game in terms of productivity.

Podcasts

• Remote Versus Local Development with Mike Brevoort (Screaming in the Cloud) - Remote or not remote, that's the question... right? Interesting discussion around a polarized question.
• DevPod for Dev Containers (DevOps and Docker Talk) - I heard of DevPod before, but it wasn't stable enough for my occasional usage. But now it looks just perfect! Looking forward to trying it!
• Blazor Web Assembly by Example with Toi B. Wright (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - You can hear the passion in her voice! I'm sure the book is excellent, plus I love the idea of picking only the part that you want/ need and not missing anything.

~Frank

Reading Notes #557

It is time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you have interesting content, share it!

Open Source

• Introducing Dart | Windows (Tim Sneath) - This a nice post that makes us dive into a world close to the machine. An interesting open-source project indeed.

Programming

• Boost Your Local Testing Game with the LambdaTest Tunnel Docker Extension (Salman Khan, Ajeet Singh Raina) - With this extension, we can test simply and securely our application. This tutorial helps us get started.

• Windows Terminal Preview 1.18 Release (Christopher Nguyen) - Tons of super cool features coming up in this release. Kalya and Hanselmann showed a few of them during Build keynote.

• PSReadLine 2.3.1-beta1 Release - PowerShell Team (Steven Bucher) - And it keeps getting better. This tool helps everyone. Make heavy user faster, and save the occasional user with suggestions.

LowCode

• Ridiculously Simple Power Apps Drop Shadow Technique (Matthew Devaney) - New cool looks for our apps.

• Building Quick and Visual Reports with Power Apps Reporting not Power BI (Shane Young) - This post shares an interesting alternative to PowerBi when requirements are less demanding.

Podcasts

• Toi Wright: Blazor WebAssembly - Episode 246 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Great interview about this .NET author.
• Episode 179: Maintainer Month with GitHub's Martin Woodward (Sustain) - Learn more about the Maintainer Month during this episode. Martin talks also about the status of GitHub, five years after being acquired by Microsoft.
• Contribute to Kubernetes (DevOps and Docker Talk) - Inspirering episode about open source. The focus is on Kubernetes but this is true for any project.
• Computing History with Atari and Commodore's Leonard Tramiel (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - I grow-up with a Pet Commodore and Commodore 64. This episode is a great interview.

Miscellaneous

• Microsoft Learn announces Microsoft Q&A Assist and new content for building AI skills (erinrifkin) - This is brilliant. Asking the question correctly or asking the right question make all the difference to the answer we will get.Looking forward to seeing this available more broadly.

~Frank

Reading Notes #556

It is time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

 

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - May 2023 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - The Azure Developers CLI just is evolving so fast! New Java early functionalities, improvement with Container Apps... Looking forward to watching Build sessions and seeing all of it!

Programming

• Announcing the new Azure Container Registry libraries (Mario Guerra) - Nice update! And there are more languages supported, which is fantastic.

• How I used GitHub Copilot to build a browser extension (Rizel Scarlett) - Another great story about how Copilot helps the productivity of a developer. And at the same time, great tutorial to build and Chrome extension.

• Choose Your Own Adventure in Open Source: Paths to Success (Bekah) - This is a nice post that provides many excellent reasons why you should start contributing to open source and how it is good for you

• Quick Progress in Software Development (Mike Krop) - Interesting... A Development Sim game?!

LowCode

• Exploring the Power Platform GPT Prompts: Unleashing the Potential of AI in the Power Platform (Lee Stott) - When new tools are coming up with such potential its great to have ideas of how to work with it. This post helps users get started or find new ways, and advance users an opportunity to share.

• Fueling Creativity: Introducing our Power Platform Prompt Samples Repository! | Power Platform Developer Blog (April Dunnam) - A great initiative to get us started when the spark is missing.

Podcasts

• Molly's Game with Molly Bloom (A Bit of Optimism) - What a story! An inspiring journey with so many challenges.
• 357: The Zune UI was the Best UI (Merge Conflict) - Ahhh! Now I understand why so many people are talking about the Zune! Great episode that go over some souvenirs and memories.

Miscellaneous

• Discover Ways to Make Open Source Contributions to Microsoft (Kiran Panjwani) - Great post shows how you, students, can make a huge difference.

• Why Put PostgreSQL in Azure - Grant Fritchey (Grant Fritchey) - Great post that explains why Azure is a great hosting platform. In this case, it's about the database and it is so true. But it's also true with many other services...

~Frank