DEV Community: Ian Rathbone

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Ian Rathbone — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 11:53:48 +0000

Here we go again!

A few weeks ago I put a BlueSky post (skoot?) out asking how blogging has changed in the last decade or so. I've been getting the itch over the last few years to return to blogging but in the era of the social web, and it's noise I wondered if there was much point.

Around two decades years ago I blogged personally and professionally. I enjoyed it and gained significant enough attention to be nominated for aGames Media Award at a site I founded with a pal. The recognition was exhilarating, but eventually led to larger sites stealing our content and publishing it as their own. This led to a decision to close the site.

Now that was a sad end to something I enjoyed doing, but I've had long enough to think about it and I'm pleased I did it. The videogames industry has changed significantly, experienced some shameful moments and I wouldn't have the stomach to put out the content needed in this age. I was also able to dedicate my time to my new family and into my software career instead.

Looking back, I am grateful for my past experience in blogging which taught me a lot about writing and the importance of ownership over creative work (which is more relevant than ever right now).

Looking forward, thanks to the feedback on BlueSky, I've had a warm realisation that I should return to blogging for the right reasons. Some people shared how blogging for them has become personal again, and this resonated with me 😸

The primary reason being that blogging can be very therapeutic for the mind, especially when journaling is considered to be essential for emotional and mental wellness. The secondary reason is that I could blog something that could be useful for someone else out there who stumbles upon my writing!

I'm not looking to build a following or monetise content. While I respect it may be for other people, this isn't in my interests. This is simply going to be my space, with no pressure on myself to post frequently, or stick to a fixed topic.

You can expect all of these things (infrequently):

Brain dumps and babblings
Technical posts around things I'm developing or using
Experiences I've had in my industry and my journey
Photos I've taken that I'm proud of
Insights into my rocky choices in music, movies and videogames!

Stay in touch on BlueSky where I'm semi-active and/or add my blog to your RSS reader.

Until the next time, I thank you for reading and leave you with a favourite quote of mine, answers on a (BlueSky) postcard if you know who said it!

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Microsoft Ignite News Overload FOMO HELP

Ian Rathbone — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 11:28:00 +0000

Microsoft hold a lot of great events throughout the year and the first major one of these is Ignite.

When it comes down to the target audience let's be honest, this event is less focussed on developers and more on the IT Crowd, decision makers, business intelligence and the growing field of citizen developers.

However! If you're a curious developer you'll notice that there is a lot of really interesting things littered throughout the event that could mean quite a lot either now or in the near future.

But how do we find out what these are without loading up a virtual backpack and attending all of the events?

Don't worry - it's pretty much all available in the book of news!

Microsoft Ignite Book of News 2021

I hope Microsoft promote this site more in the future for their events as it's becoming a really well presented site, with a well thought out table of contents that help you find out everything that was announced at the show.

The highlights for me are in the first section and especially 1.4 - Azure Dev and Ecosystem.

Azure Communication Services - one to watch! My devs are used to using Twilio for tasks like SMS, but now we can stay in the Azure ecosystem - which is also great for the billing bods!
.NET Upgrade Assistant - we still have a few, more complex apps we haven't made the jump to Core on just yet. So now this is in preview we may give it a spin before the .NET 6 version appears, just so we get an idea of what suggestions we get.

There's other really cool news in this section too, and depending on your role and interests I'm sure you'll find some!

Looking to the future - the biggest news was definitely Mesh and the increasing investment / push Microsoft is putting into mixed reality and Hololens. While I remain sceptical, they certainly put on a good show and I look forward to seeing more practical uses of the system.

There's no way to look cool while trying to operate a HoloLens 🤠

In the meantime I'll be sticking with our choice of remote interactivity in Microsoft Teams, which has been excellent during the pandemic and looks to continue as we move into a new future of remote working for our dev teams!

Sunday Review (2019-05-19)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 19 May 2019 13:20:18 +0000

Euro Vision

This week's post-Eurovision write up of the week is brought to you by a slightly delicate head.

So I'm skipping the formalities and going straight into what I've been up to on the learning front - which is mainly about seeing Jon Skeet (and his amazing trousers) this week!

Learning

I was very excited about going to Developer South Coast this week at Southampton. They've been going for years and have had some of the best speakers present lots of .NET based technology.

This week we were fortunate to have the great Jon Skeet in to talk about C# and where it's headed in version 8. He spent an engaging first hour talking about the new Nullability work that has been put in to this version and how he's been approaching it in the open source community by supporting it in his NodaTime library.

His biggest takeaway (on the Nullability support) is that the open source community does need to embrace this feature to make it useful for developers everywhere. It has to be from the ground up otherwise it's not going to gain the traction it needs.

We also looked at pattern matching and what they'll mean for switch statements. Which look like they're going to take a little bit of time to get my head around as they read very differently to what I'm used to, however it's a good step.

Finally we took a very quick look at the new Async options including... IAsyncEnumerablewhich I absolutely love the idea of!

Otherwise, setting myself a target of getting through some learning each week was eventually going to have the odd break here and there. I've not done any of the Role IQ tests as it's been a busier week, but I did start the Docker Deep Dive as I want to understand it better. Also Nigel Poulton has to be one of the most enthusiastic speakers I've heard on Pluralsight!

The News

Each week I'll post a few links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, Reddit and other parts of the Internet.

Couple of articles I found really useful this week were Why WebAssembly Matters and the difference between Azure Application Gateway Load Balancer Front Door and Firewall.

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

How to Join a Social Network in 1998 - http://bit.ly/2W7KB2L
Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often - http://bit.ly/2W9rzvN
Microsoft Partners with Sony on Gaming?! - http://bit.ly/2Efh4ND
New secret-spilling flaw affects almost every Intel chip since 2011 - https://tcrn.ch/2LGNKWs
Stack Overflow Confirms Internal Network Hack - http://bit.ly/2Hz5yx9
Stack Overflow lets Facebook track us across their sites - http://bit.ly/2LGrMmb
Tesla Has 10 Months Of Cash To Burn Before Dying Out - http://bit.ly/2W9S8RQ

developers

Cloudflare architecture and how BPF eats the world - http://bit.ly/30rMARR
Development Analyst: 'TypeScript Is Exploding' - http://bit.ly/2LJT2Ah
Host Your Own Blog with Gitlab and Netlify - http://bit.ly/2Hpxoxe
How to Move Beyond a Monolithic Data Lake to a Distributed Data Mesh - http://bit.ly/2VhTHbO
Standards.REST - http://standards.rest/
To Message Bus or Not: Distributed Systems Design - http://bit.ly/2ln5pF0
Why WebAssembly Matters? - http://bit.ly/2HqfiuY

.NET / Azure

.NET Developer Updates from Build 2019 - http://bit.ly/2vSxF5d
A Cosmonauts guide to the latest Azure Cosmos DB announcements - http://bit.ly/30lniVr
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 197 - Getting started with Azure API Management - http://bit.ly/2EayE56
Create Interactive .NET Documentation with Try .NET - http://bit.ly/2EegSxY
Default implementations in interfaces - http://bit.ly/30i4W7M
General Availability For Azure Dev Spaces - http://bit.ly/2JCZXZt
New No-Code Azure-Based Web UI Simplifies Automated Machine Learning - http://bit.ly/2YvlMON
Switch Expressions and Pattern-Based Usings A Look at New Language Features in C# 8 - http://bit.ly/2VDlxUI
The future UWP - http://bit.ly/2LPJkfX
Updating Microsoft Account Logins in ASP.NET Core with OpenID Connect and Azure Active Directory - http://bit.ly/2W91blN
What is the difference between Azure Application Gateway Load Balancer Front Door and Firewall? - http://bit.ly/2HoCCJE
VS Code Wizard-Driven Web Template Studio Does Full-Stack Web Apps - http://bit.ly/2WK8SvN

Have a great week!

Sunday Review (2019-05-12)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 12 May 2019 18:34:14 +0000

BUILD it and they will come...

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Yes I'm talking about Microsoft BUILD 2019.

I've never been prouder to be a .NET developer using the Microsoft stack and the tools available. It's a promising future ahead with the announcement of .NET 5 building on the solid foundation that .NET Core has provided.

There's great tools coming like the newest online code editor, (which I'm sure will get a better name than Visual Studio Online because it's just confusing) which takes the huge momentum behind Visual Studio Code and enable quick edits in the browser. I'll be interested to see where this goes as I'm often on the bus home thinking of little things I'd like to do or review a pull request in more detail.

Microsoft have changed so much in the last 10 years, embracing a plethora of platforms, languages and ideas.

Learning

Having completed the Pluralsight Python path I wanted to get the Scrum Framework one done this week and succeeded.

To get fully completed I went through the “Product Owner Fundamentals - Plotting the Product Owner's Career Path” by Jeremy Jarrell and then Big Scrum by David Starr.

I now need to go through the Skills IQ tests for both Python and Scrum. I may well try and do a separate post to highlight my thoughts on these.

The News

Each week I'll post a few links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, Reddit and other parts of the Internet.

BUILD has dominated the news for me this week and the best highlight of their strategy for the next few years is written up nicely in .NET Core is the Future of .NET and then Introducing .NET 5.

As a bonus make sure you watch Microsoft's launch video for the New Terminal. It's very Apple...

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

Breaking Up Facebook Is Not the Answer - https://nyti.ms/2Hejfmi
DuckDuckGo proposes the Do-Not-Track Act of 2019 - https://selnd.com/2DJlhsx
Google Brings Flutter to the Web in Technical Preview - http://bit.ly/2JoOGMf
Google Fights Back - http://bit.ly/2VPTjW9
Introducing GitHub Package Registry - http://bit.ly/2E1l5Fc
Microsoft Reboots the PowerToys for Windows 10 - http://bit.ly/2VpMICA
Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP Elevates Win32 - http://bit.ly/2HcRRnE
Microsoft will ship a full Linux kernel in Windows 10 - http://bit.ly/2Ls1owq
Nintendo 'Must Keep Up' With Cloud Tech But Sees Further Potential In Dedicated Hardware - http://bit.ly/2WB25oo
Nest the company died at Google I/O 2019 - http://bit.ly/2PTePUw
Uber opens at a disappointing $42 per share - https://tcrn.ch/2JfaESO
Watch the HoloLens 2 Apollo 11 Demo - http://bit.ly/2PZhD2w

developers

Build 2019: Windows 10 to Pick Up Tabbed Terminal More - http://bit.ly/2WmACXf
Database IDs Have No Place In URIs - http://bit.ly/2VeQcCL
HTTP headers for the responsible developer - http://bit.ly/2Zv8C5O
The Liskov Substitution Principle and why you might want to enforce it - http://bit.ly/2vSVPfE
When Engineers Become Whistleblowers - http://bit.ly/2VnAoTg

.NET / Azure

Announcing ML.NET 1.0 - http://bit.ly/2DSaV9Y
Announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5 - http://bit.ly/2DQ2NGY
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 196 - Testing Azure Functions - http://bit.ly/2V4fzHo
Build 2019: Microsoft Announces .NET 5 - http://bit.ly/2PSxFLx
Default timeouts in .Net code. What are they if you do not specify? - http://bit.ly/2vW3HwU
Immutability in C# - http://bit.ly/2PZ3nXz
Introducing .NET 5 - http://bit.ly/2Lt5Uuv
Lightweight custom authentication with ASP.NET Core - http://bit.ly/2V2PdFN
Your .NET 5 Questions Answered (Kinda Sorta) Part 1: WCF - http://bit.ly/2VTFp5m

Have a great week!

Sunday Review (2019-05-05)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 05 May 2019 17:07:48 +0000

Looking to the Stars

This week we said goodbye to one of the most pleasant people on the internet - especially Reddit, with Peter Mayhew. I was fortunate enough to meet him once, alongside Dave Prowse at one of the Showmaster events in England. A lovely inspirational giant who I'll always remember fondly.

What else has this week brought?

A complete meltdown on Thursday night for Azure. My only free night of the week! Sat down ready to play the new Sea of Thieves update, and I start getting emails about our services experiencing issues. Microsoft admitted there was a DNS related issue which took out most regions and services.

Turns out I couldn't even get in to Sea of Thieves as it runs on Azure!

This got me thinking about fail-over in a multi cloud world and how we can tackle these issues. If anyone has any ideas at the moment or examples of what they do I'd be very interested to hear it.

Watching Twitter on the night I saw several accounts apologising for the downtime so it doesn't seem to be in most service provider's remit to have a multi cloud fail-over solution.

How do you take advantage of excellent solutions like Azure Functions and have a multi cloud fail-over solution?

Learning

Two paths I'm still working through in Pluralsight are Python and the Scrum Framework.

I'm nearly done with the Path for Scrum but I did finish the Python one!!

I've really enjoyed the whole experience even if the final chapter from Robert Smallshire is rather daunting, going in to some heavy detail. After all it is the Advanced section, and I imagine I'll end up revisiting it when I get to that point in my Python career!

I just need to develop something now....

The News

Each week I'll post a few links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, Reddit and other parts of the Internet.

Don't forget - it's Microsoft Build time so we should be getting some news about when .NET Core 3 is getting released, and some more Blazor information. Exciting!

There's a long read here about Microsoft's strategy that I would recommend.

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

BBC admits iPlayer has lost streaming fight with Netflix - http://bit.ly/2Gyo8oL
Eric Schmidt on Twitter - https://twitter.com/ericschmidt/status/1123324575436214272
Facebook Tries a New Look as Zuckerberg Proclaims a New Era - https://on.wsj.com/2V7AtKy
Fitbits Smart Watch Sales are Surging - http://bit.ly/2PMW45d
Gavin Williamson U.K. Defense Chief Is Fired Over Huawei Leak - https://nyti.ms/2LixDOD
Google Shows First Cracks in Years - https://on.wsj.com/2GMemiN
Mark Zuckerberg wants to build WeChat for the West - https://econ.st/2DHLnvU
Microsoft Build Kickoff 2019 - http://bit.ly/2GRmoY0
Microsoft launches a drag-and-drop machine learning tool - https://tcrn.ch/2Y23gxi
Microsoft Launches HoloLens 2 Development Edition - http://bit.ly/2vAGlwT
Microsofts xCloud Reaches New Milestone - http://bit.ly/2V6v9at

developers

It is perfectly OK to only code at work you can have a life too. - http://bit.ly/2GY10l5
Next-Paradigm Programming Languages: What Will They Look Like and What Changes Will They Bring? - http://bit.ly/2Y1kg6W

.NET / Azure

Azure Functions Fundamentals Updated for Version 2 - http://bit.ly/2ZVSGcZ
Azure SignalR Service now supports ASP.NET! - http://bit.ly/2VuY1bK
Azure Tips and Tricks - Become more productive with Azure - http://bit.ly/2UEzT24
Blazor on the Server: The Good and the Unfortunate - http://bit.ly/2DGJvUh
F# from a C# Developers Perspective Part 1 - http://bit.ly/2ZrVsX1
F# from a C# Developers Perspective Part 2 - http://bit.ly/2GTCj96
GraphQL Mutations in ASP.NET Core - http://bit.ly/2W7RSzk
Logging in a .Net Core Library - http://bit.ly/2V0I0pA
Using an Azure Service Bus Topic Subscription in an Azure Function - http://bit.ly/2VEHDWq
When To Use Static Classes In C# - http://bit.ly/2GSX459
Zero to Kubernetes on Azure - http://bit.ly/2GsTZY2

Have a great week!

Sunday Review (2019-04-28)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 28 Apr 2019 10:38:56 +0000

SUPER EASTER BUMPER EDITION

Happy Easter!?

It may as well still be Easter in our house because we're still getting through the chocolate eggs and hot cross buns. The local shops aren't helping by reducing their excess chocolate to such ridiculous prices....

Moving on.

Being away from the job for 10 days gave me some time to reflect about what I've done in the last year and I'm really proud of what we've accomplished. I also maintain a side business I've been running for 12 years now which still brings in some good projects and pocket money.

Having time for reflection has allowed me to come up with a little plan for the future of that company and how I can find time to expand that product.

I'm going to be investing time in the coming weeks into moving on with an idea I've had for 8 years that I've redrawn and prototyped around 10 times. It's probably worth mentioning that it's not simply an idea as there's two different instances of it running in Azure powering two different solutions for my customers in America and Australia.

It's time I took the plunge and build one version that suits both of these customer's requirements and fits the subscription model that I believe it can be.

I'll try to talk more about this as I attempt to move on with building it, and share the pitfalls and (hopefully) successes I find.

Learning

Two paths I'm currently working through in Pluralsight are Python and the Scrum Framework.

We've reached a great point in our team with Scrum and we've appointed our Scrum Master - not me! This is a good thing!

I'm going to complete the Path for Scrum so this week I completed Growing Yourself and Your Team by Jeremy Jarrell. This unit goes through the benefits of becoming a coach for the team helping them reach Scrum nirvana and finding your own flow for the team.

Getting close to completing the Python Path I took a refreshing journey down the WEB2PY road with Terry Toy by watching the Full Stack Web Development videos. Viewing these from a C# MVC world isn't a struggle at all now I've been through most of the Python path and it's good to see how far along Python has come with frameworks. I'd be interested to try out some of Terry's examples and play with the full stack tools that WEB2PY provides.

If you're interested in Python web development I definitely recommend this course.

The News

Each week I'll post a few links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, reddit and other parts of the Internet.

I'm most interested in the couple of articles around Blazor: 'The End of the Experiment Is in Sight' and Comparing Client Side Blazor to Server Side Blazor. I've found this technology to be valuable in getting some proof of concept user interfaces up and running in the last 6 months and look forward to seeing full support soon!

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

Ape using a Smartphone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESAt2f2nCWM
Can Uber ever make money? - https://econ.st/2IVUPiK
Cloud Irregular: IAM Is The Real Cloud Lock-In - http://bit.ly/2GRhXxJ
Facebook now says its password leak affected millions of Instagram users - https://tcrn.ch/2VOKU2c
Google Inbox Co-Founder Fixes Gmail. Again. - http://bit.ly/2Zz00en
Google is eating our mail - http://bit.ly/2W1nNkZ
KaiOS takes on the Apple-Android mobile duopoly - https://econ.st/2IHFrae
Microsoft is winning the techlash - http://bit.ly/2GCvqsI
Put Another Zero on Facebooks Fine. Then We Can Talk. - https://nyti.ms/2Zw8rqV
Sorry But Sets is Dead - http://bit.ly/2W1sE5A

developers

Amazon Has Gone From Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor Say Open Source Developers - http://bit.ly/2GEqDHa
Distributed transactions arent and microservices still dont mix - http://bit.ly/2G6SzCd
Fluent 1.0: a localization system for natural-sounding translations - https://mzl.la/2IEKYO7
Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money - http://bit.ly/2IKscWx
Stepping away from Sass - http://bit.ly/2R765OF

.NET / Azure

.NET Core Opinion 13 - Commit Your Scripts - http://bit.ly/2GE4Mib
.NET for Apache Spark' Debuts for C#/F# Big Data - http://bit.ly/2W8iekS
Azure DevOps Hands-On Labs - http://bit.ly/2VNWmLn
Blazor Update: 'The End of the Experiment Is in Sight' - http://bit.ly/2IHMLlI
Comparing Client Side Blazor to Server Side Blazor - http://bit.ly/2ICfpFl
Demystifying HttpClient Internals: HttpResponseMessage A look at the internals of HttpResponseMessage - http://bit.ly/2IGHBX0
Securing Azure SQL Databases with managed identities just got easier! - http://bit.ly/2UXFtBC
Serverless automation using PowerShell in Azure Functions - http://bit.ly/2ZLIow2
Tweeting new blog posts with Logic Apps - http://bit.ly/2V2Uime

Have a great week!

Sunday Review (2019-04-14)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 19:47:37 +0000

Holidays!

My time as Scrum Master has come to an end this week as my sprint closes. It's been an excellent challenge and I've really enjoyed it. It's proven to be a good learning exercise and hopefully I've brought some new ideas for the next set of sprints we put together.

We've also had some interesting authentication and authorisation questions come to our team which we are still trying to figure out for the company. I find myself leaning on the great flexibility that Identity Server provides, having spun up several of these in Azure within 10 minutes to get some proof of concept ideas flowing.

Now I rest as we head into Easter and the final season of Game of Thrones.

Learning

As I'd done enough Scrum training for this sprint I decided to complete the Python Developer's toolkit. This is a good course to get a clean comparison of some tools and decide on what you need for your next application.

Continuing the Python Path I took a refreshing dive into Unit Testing with Python from Emily Bache. Apart from getting into some great detail about Unit Testing and the tools available, Emily has some great definitions on how unit testing should be done. I especially liked her comparison of Mocks, Stubs and Fakes.

It's been some time since I've done any learning around Unit Tests so I'm even thinking I may jump into some C# ones at some point once I've completed Python.

The News

Each week I'll post a few links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, reddit and other parts of the Internet.

Big news around Julian Assange getting removed from his prison cell. If I had to pick one story out from the week it would be the New York Time's click fest: Opinion : Its Time to Panic About Privacy - https://nyti.ms/2UrtH25

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

Facebook Showed Me My Data Is Everywhere And I Have Absolutely No Control Over It - http://bit.ly/2UKmadV
Opinion : Its Time to Panic About Privacy - https://nyti.ms/2UrtH25
Whats new in next version of Microsoft Edge - http://bit.ly/2UyTFAE
Why I Switched From Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm - http://bit.ly/2UyBVW1

.NET / Azure

Authentication & authorization in microservice architecture - http://bit.ly/2D8YkyO
Bringing 12-year-old WPF code to .NET Core 3 - http://bit.ly/2KyYKEr
Constraining Generics in C# - http://bit.ly/2v4L4Xb
Encrypting Identity Tokens in IdentityServer4 - http://bit.ly/2G2UqI9
Getting Started with Azure Front Door - http://bit.ly/2GjrSdw
Gradient: full TensorFlow binding for C# - http://bit.ly/2VwIaGh
How to stay informed about Azure service issues - http://bit.ly/1kgN3z3
Introducing the App Service Migration Assistant for ASP.NET applications - http://bit.ly/2UDWIb1
Scott Hunter Details 'What's Coming with .NET Core 3.0' - http://bit.ly/2KD2tRH
string vs. String is not a style debate - http://bit.ly/2UYuqHs
The Git Stash Functionality in Visual Studio 2019 - http://bit.ly/2UCz12w
User-Friendly Fuzzing with Sienna Locomotive - http://bit.ly/2WUML5I
Using ASP.NET Core Identity user accounts in integration tests - http://bit.ly/2UsVFKX
Using using using with C# 8 - http://bit.ly/2VyJsAG

Have a great week!

Sunday Review (2019-04-07)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 07 Apr 2019 09:30:00 +0000

Witty Title!

It's been a very long ride this week with some challenging projects at work and at home. I've warmed to the Scrum Master role and had a couple of good planning sessions and helped out with impediments the team have faced.

I'm still putting together a strong Web API project in NETCore 2.2 using features like Health Checks. Once we create more applications with this feature I'm going to look into getting a dashboard along the lines of this on Github that even has a Docker Image.

I'm also still finding excellent little time savers in the documentation such as Web API Conventions that helps with your Open API documentation while keeping the code clean.

We’ve been trying more incremental feature based pull requests which is also getting great early feedback.

Learning

Continuing down the Pluralsight Scrum Framework path I've completed a few more courses from Jeremy Jarrell. The path is a mix focus on the Product Owner and Scrum master roles which has been useful to see both sides of the framework. It's certainly helped with my current role of Scrum master and changed the way I've been getting the team to do standups this week. We also ended up with a mid sprint (re) plan because there were some shifts to priorities.

Also switched back to the Python Path and started the Python Developer's toolkit which (as the name states) focuses on tools like debugging and code cleanup.

The News

Each week I'll post a few links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, reddit and other parts of the Internet.

The biggest .NET related news of this week was the release of Visual Studio 2019 which I've been using in preview for a few months now. Microsoft have released a nice 'keynote' video promoting the release at “Not your average keynote”.

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

Defence Against the Docker Arts - http://bit.ly/2UihmNN
How to separate your data from your code - http://bit.ly/2FXhwQj
HTTPS Isn't Always as Secure as It Seems - http://bit.ly/2UgXAlE
Millions of Facebook Records Found on Amazon Cloud Servers - https://bloom.bg/2HZ6ca6
Should you be concerned about LastPass uploading your passwords to its server? - http://bit.ly/2Vp98zE
Tools for REST API monitoring in 2019 - http://bit.ly/2UjVxwY
You probably don't need that hip web framework - https://ift.tt/2CN8zbS

.NET / Azure

A Glimpse into WebAssembly - http://bit.ly/2FSW1Ao
Announcing ML.NET 1.0 RC – Machine Learning for .NET - http://bit.ly/2uQflcm
Azure Boards Project Paper Cuts - http://bit.ly/2G3ebke
Azure Front Door Service is now generally available - http://bit.ly/2uNVEBM
Introducing Time Travel Debugging for Visual Studio Enterprise 2019 - http://bit.ly/2Kag7vp
Strongly Typed Feature Flags With ASP.NET Core 2.2 - http://bit.ly/2TXBbVj
Unifying Windows desktop development with .NET Core 3.0 - http://bit.ly/2I0zx3W
Using custom appsettings.json with ASP.NET Core integration tests - http://bit.ly/2U1yG4y
We've recorded a free course about Microservices in .NET Core - http://bit.ly/2If6FEo
Visual Studio 2019 goes live with C Python shared editing - http://bit.ly/2YStN15

Sunday Review (2019-03-31)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 19:59:14 +0000

Marching On!

Happy Mothers Day! What a superb sunny day we've had, which is why this is very late on this final Sunday of March.
You know what? I'm not going to prattle on this week and I'll keep it brief. Done.

Learning

I decided on a change of pace so put the Python Path on hold and wanted to refresh my knowledge of Agile and Scrum as I'm due to step into the shoes of Scrum Master next week. I noticed that Pluralsight have a Scrum Framework path authored mostly be Jeremy Jarrell so I've been through three of his courses this last week. They're really good, and it's already got me drawing up some ideas on what I'd like to try out with our team on our next sprint.

They're going to hate me aren't they?

The News

Each week I'll post 10-20 links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, reddit and other parts of the Internet.

My favourite read this week was Comparing gRPC and HTTP APIs (James Newton King) as it's already providing a decent cheat sheet on how to choose the right technology for the problem you're looking to solve. I'm really interested in getting to understand gRPC better in the coming months and see how it's stacking up against RESTful and GraphQL.

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

What did Google+ get right - https://ift.tt/2TIzPxv
Microsoft leads the way in banning April Fools Day pranks - https://ift.tt/2usMYRr
Garfield phones beach mystery finally solved after 35 years - https://ift.tt/2HYmuzc
Microsoft Takes Control of 99 Websites Linked to Hacker Group - https://ift.tt/2WBVE42
The long complicated and extremely frustrating history of Medium 2012 to present - https://ift.tt/2U4yx4t
Meet Q. The First Genderless Voice - https://ift.tt/2HgbRrI
Why Naval Ravikant Thinks Remote Work Is The Future - https://ift.tt/2Upw5T5
Apples Services Event - https://ift.tt/2TZkXQn

.NET / Azure

Comparing gRPC and HTTP APIs - https://ift.tt/2WtILJ0
Learning .NET Unit Testing the Easy Way - https://ift.tt/2FCDVTb
Building serverless microservices in Azure - sample architecture - https://ift.tt/2JDOBWP
How to Test Live Services with Fiddler AutoResponder - https://ift.tt/2HUKvqz
Blazor: Implementing Client Side Search As You Type Using bind-value-oninput - https://ift.tt/2HU8RB5
Windows containers now supported in Kubernetes - https://ift.tt/2FsncBH
Using FluentValidation for Forms Validation in Razor Components - https://ift.tt/2UgYZHU
AWS Lambda layers with .NET Core - https://ift.tt/2TzF42C
Using NodaTime with Dapper - https://ift.tt/2UeLs3D

Sunday Review (2019-03-24)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 24 Mar 2019 08:58:52 +0000

Deal or No Deal

It's been a weird old week in the UK again as we plunge further into another fortnight of uncertainty, however I've had some really good experiences. My daughter turned 8 years old on Friday and we had a fun shopping trip, with a pause in a great american diner. I'm enjoying watching her grow up and become her own character, and she's showing interest in my work so I'll be hoping to try out some coding with her soon.

I also ventured to Southampton to the Developer South Coast event where Lee Mallon talked about ML.Net. I've not had the chance to look into this exciting technology at all but have a much better understanding of it now and would recommend you check out his NDC video on ML.Net.

Learning

Apart from the ML.Net I've continued through my Pluralsight courses this week by moving into the Intermediate level of the Python Path by completing Python - Beyond the Basics.

After the previous week I admit I found going into this one a little daunting. I did wonder how I was going to get through 7hrs and 22mins of content in a week, but I did it! One thing I have noticed with this course is that the instructors tend to speak at a slower pace and turning up the video speed to around 1.4 made the experience much better. I found I was able to take in more information and engage better.

I'm still finding the subject of Python interesting and I'm starting to realise that I'm going to need to write something to apply what I've learned so if anyone has any suggestions please let me know! Right now I'm just considering rewriting some of my older APIs in Flask so I get some practical use of the language.

The News

Each week I'll post 10-20 links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, reddit and other parts of the Internet.

The best tips I enjoyed reading were from the article 'Team Room Problems: 5 Signs of a Toxic Code Review Culture'.

I'm fortunate where I work. My peers are really constructive in code reviews and we have a culture of helping one another improve. Even if some of that comes with well aimed japes... No I'm not grinding my teeth.

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years - https://ift.tt/2HIs6x8
Microsoft Launches Public Preview of Windows Virtual Desktop - https://ift.tt/2Fiw2SB
Microsoft Shares a Few More Details about xCloud at GDC - https://ift.tt/2WeW007
Microsoft Watches GitHub Commits for Azure Secrets - https://ift.tt/2CAIyfD
How the Guardian Went Digital - https://ift.tt/2ubC95Y

.NET / Azure

Visual Studio Subscriptions everything you need for Azure development - https://ift.tt/2TX2F1u
Demystifying HttpClient Internals: HttpRequestMessage A look at the internals of HttpRequestMessage - https://ift.tt/2HFNPG5
Memory and Span pt.1 - https://ift.tt/2Y9Ya2I
Supercharging your Web APIs with OData and ASP.NET Core - https://ift.tt/2HwLKNj
Simplifying your environment setup while meeting compliance needs with built-in Azure Blueprints - https://ift.tt/2CuMu1C
Hosting ASP.NET Core behind https in Google Kubernetes Engine - https://ift.tt/2u9Aqyb
Async Streams with C# 8 - https://ift.tt/2W5N3pU
Perfect console application in .net Core: set up dependency injection - https://ift.tt/2JqGj4j

Sunday Review (2019-03-17)

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 19:23:08 +0000

I'm back!

I've done it, a second post! It's been a busy week with a mixed bag of coding challenges. I've been engaged in a little python work but mainly sticking to my old faithful C#.

One of the tasks I've had is to look into a decent JSON RPC client for parsing responses and producing typed model responses which can be consumed in services. If anyone has any suggestions I'd appreciate it but I'm like going to use the EdjCase one I've found on nuget and GitHub.

Learning

Managed to get through two Pluralsight courses this week and I completed the beginner route on the Python Path by finishing Python Fundamentals!

This course was a little tougher than the previous as it was longer with more detail, a mix of authors and deeper content. Overall it was great but it could probably do with being a little shorter and concise.

Had a little time left at the end of the week as I somehow managed to get through the Python faster than planned. I took a break and watched one by Troy Hunt which was an insightful introduction on creating a culture of security at your organisation.

I got some useful information out of this which I believe I could bring into my organisation.

I like the idea of bringing in a Security Quality Metric alongside our testing routines and finding a Security Champion in the business. It's likely that I'm going to nominate myself as I have a real interest in the topic. Some of the other points I found interesting were around trialling internal bug bounties and looking into becoming a certified ethical hacker.

The News

Each week I'll post 10-20 links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, reddit and other parts of the Internet.

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

These Cookie Warning Shenanigans Have Got to Stop - https://ift.tt/2XUPYmX
Halo: The Master Chief Collection is Coming to PC Halo: Reach Being Added to the Collection - https://ift.tt/2VTM4sL
Faxing is old tech. So why is it also growing in popularity? - https://ift.tt/2VNwRth
WhatsApp founder warns world to delete Facebook immediately - https://ift.tt/2UBTTmx
NGINX to Join F5: Proud to Finish One Chapter and Excited to Start the Next - https://ift.tt/2Y01EFc

GraphQl

5 mistakes to avoid when getting started with GraphQL - https://ift.tt/2Tc3y1N

.NET / Azure

Using the Azure SignalR Service Bindings in Azure Functions to Create Real-time Serverless Applications - https://ift.tt/2CjOnOe
Using HttpClientFactory with WPF on .NET Core 3.0 - https://ift.tt/2UDiKX4
High CPU usage caused by using the same HttpClient instance - https://ift.tt/2HsTAH9
Announcing ML.NET 0.11 Machine Learning for .NET - https://ift.tt/2VHmc32
How to build WebAssembly C# Apps with the Mono AOT and Windows Subsystem forLinux - https://ift.tt/2UI7xox
.NET Core Container Images now Published to Microsoft Container Registry - https://ift.tt/2TQq4BJ
Building Microservices On .NET Core - Part 4 Building API Gateways With Ocelot - https://ift.tt/2UvGFb0

Sunday Review 2019-03-10

Ian Rathbone — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:07:30 +0000

Hello!

I've joined the Dev.to community in the last few weeks and I'm having a blast! It's great to find a friendly community of keen developers who are open to chatting about what they do.

Now I'm looking forward to getting back into writing a few posts around the subjects I'm interesting in. One of the things I'd like to do is create a weekly post with what I've been up to, and what articles I found interesting or tips I've found useful.

Hopefully this will be useful for anyone reading, and provide a place for me to refer back to when I forget what I have been doing!

Learning

This week I continued my Python journey by completing another course on the Python Path in Pluralsight. I found thePython: Getting Started course by Bo Milanovich to be a great start introduction to the language, syntax and some tools available as well as showcasing the different kinds of apps you can build.

The News

Each week I'll post 10-20 links that I've found the most interesting from technology blogs, reddit and other parts of the Internet.

The highlight for me this week is the release of .NET Core 3 Preview 3. With a full release due towards the end of summer looking likely, I'll be looking forward to getting some Razor Component projects out in Azure!

Check out some other articles I've found interesting below:

Technology / General

Microsoft Is Open Sourcing Windows Calculator - https://ift.tt/2EH5s57
'I Want To Expose Google's Mistakes': The Russian Hacker Blamed For A Big Android Fraud Problem - https://ift.tt/2rEm6yW
The Special Curse of Living on Instagram's Favorite Street - https://ift.tt/2Vxp3eW
SpaceX Crew Dragon Splashes Down after Historic Test Flight- https://ift.tt/2XMGFFy

GraphQL

Leveraging GraphQL Schemas and Interfaces - https://ift.tt/2HcgwdB

.NET / Azure

Demystifying HttpClient Internals - https://ift.tt/2Unk9Rr
Web scraping with Electron - https://ift.tt/2Tsfd1h
Configuring Per-App Scaling on Azure App Service - https://ift.tt/2TzgXVM
await the async Letdown - https://ift.tt/2TCkmDy
Worker Service template in .NET Core 3.0 - https://ift.tt/2VJOTwg
Using .NET Core 3.0 Dependency Injection and Service Provider with WPF - https://ift.tt/2NSK6G7
Exploring Blazor with Visual Studio 2019 - https://ift.tt/2NUfkgp
Announcing .NET Core 3 Preview 3 - https://ift.tt/2HfARhY
Real-time serverless applications with the SignalR Service bindings in Azure Functions - https://ift.tt/2Cctwwz

Development

Why deadlines and sprints are bad for you - https://ift.tt/2tNPAsx
You Dont Need All That Complex/Expensive/Distracting Infrastructure - https://ift.tt/2SDxHqz

Done

Thanks for reading! If you're still here I'd be interesting to know what you think of the post so let me know below whether it's been of use. Otherwise stay tuned for some more Sunday Reviews and other posts I'm cooking up...!