Findings and thingies

This weeks Weekly edition unfortunately is a litte bit delayed. This week was kind of stressful and on Thursday evening it simply forgot to write it.

If you are using Microsoft Authenticator for MFA to protect your account, what you definitely should do, you maybe have been asking yourself how to transfer this app to a new device. Toni Pohl wrote a nice guide on how to transfer you authenticator app to a new device: How to setup the MFA App Authenticator app on a new device for a specific Azure AD

Priyesh Wagh wrote a useful guide on how to "Create new Sandbox and copy Production over to it in PowerPlatform Admin Center". This one is quite useful if you are working on Power Platform.

Security is always important. Why not start the year even it is already some weeks old with a review of "Top ten best security practices for Azure today". Really helpful session from last years Microsoft Ignite.

Async/await is a constant question in the .NET community. The article "ConfigureAwait FAQ" deals in particular with ConfigureAwait which continues to draw questions in this context.

This weekly will start with a some articles dealing with patterns in software development.

• Design Patterns: Observer
• Implementing the Outbox Pattern
• Kubernetes: Producer Consumer pattern with scalable consumer using dapr, KEDA and Azure ServiceBus Queues

From my point of view it is more important to understand patterns in general than how to use every specific piece of software/programming language in detail especially if you are trying to move into an architectural role. Often you have to find a solution for a specific problem. This is from my observation easier if you have a broad toolset of patterns available instead of a specific piece of software.
The last one from the former ones is my personal favorite because it facilitates so much cutting edge technology like KEDA, dapr and Azure Service Bus.

"Async / Await: From Zero to Hero" is a must read for people trying to get their head around async/await in C#. Zhi Yuan has written a great article to understand the concepts behind async/await.

If your New Years resolution is to get started with Microsoft Azure Donovan Brown tweeted about this article: HOW TO LEARN MICROSOFT AZURE IN 2020. You will get an overview what and where you can learn on Azure. In addition you can have a look at this video: Learn what you can do with an Azure free account

Tobi Lutke pointed at "The Value of Grey Thinking". I must admit that several years ago I was also often trapped in black and white thinking. But especially in IT it is important to think "grey" to find solutions for problems. The article provides a good foundation why you should also try to be better at thinking grey.

Interesting approach provided by Oren Eini. He describes how to minimize friction when setting up a new (software) project. "Proper software architecture for a new project" basically describes from my point of view kind of a combination of MVP and a Scrum like approach.

Nadeeja Bomiriya wrote a good guide how to handle Dynamics 365 Release Management. "[Best Practices] Dynamics 365 Release Management " explains furthermore which stakeholders need to be informed during such a release.

Last weekly edition for this year as next week will already be New Year's Eve.

Recently I've read more and more things about OKRs. OKR has a long history that can be traced back to 1954. Lately OKR got more and more attention because big companies like IBM, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Dropbox, Spotify, Disney, and BMW are using them. "[Workflow Guide] Transform the Way You Set and Track Goals with OKRs" explains how you can facilitate OKRs for setting personal goals.

DHH wrote an interesting article on using Ruby on Rails at Basecamp. Being the inventor of Ruby on Rails he might be a little bit biased on using Ruby but his point in "Only 15% of the Basecamp operations budget is spent on Ruby" is not advocating for Ruby on Rails in general. Instead he explains why it wouldn't be a good idea for Basecamp to switch to another software stack even though it might provide a performance advantage.

SSH keys explained is a good introduction to what SSH keys are in general and what they can be used for. And why you should use them.

If someone has some spare-time during the holiday season and wants to deep dive in B-tree techniques the >200 pages document "Modern B-Tree Techniques" by Goetz Graefe might be a good starting point. Thanks at Jaromir Hamala for pointing at this gem.

Even though the article "Commit messages are not titles" is dated 2015 it got some traction this week on Hacker News. If you would like to see the discussion on HN you can find it here. Pretty interesting/controversial point of view by Salvatore Sanfilippo but I do agree to this. A commit message from my position must serve two purposes: explain what this commit contains and what it does. If its a title I'm fine, if not I'm fine, too. Nevertheless you should settle to a convention in your team to which everybody sticks.

A nice introduction to CloudEvents has been delivered by Doug Davis, Clemens Vasters, Klaus Deissner and Vladimir Bacvanski at KubeCon 2019. You can watch their session online. Watch CloudEvents - Intro, Deep-Dive and More! if you are interested in understanding how CloudEvents can serve purpose to you.

Always interesting how big software shops handle changes in API changes or even breaking changes in general. Shopify which is unquestionable a big software shop has published "How Shopify Manages API Versioning and Breaking Changes" which goes in detail on handling and dealing with this kind of changes.

Another great article from a big software shop comes from Amazon. If you have ever had to deal with deployments of stateful services you know this isn't as easy as it sounds in the first place. My money quote from "Ensuring rollback safety during deployments" is:

Ensuring that we can roll back a deployment without any disruption for our customers is critical in making a service reliable.

If you are interested in more articles like this you should definitely have a look at the The Amazon Builders' Library.

Really interesting topic list from Chris O'Brien. A very broad spectrum of things which a Office 365 should be capable off to do. But I think you should have a very good understanding of all these topics even though you needn't have to implement them all by yourself.

Going faster with continuous delivery is a very interesting article from Amazon. You get to know how they improved their speed of execution by adopting a continuous delivery approach.

My money quote from Kevin Mas Ruiz article is: "Teams should not share code, but a common platform.". His article "To Domain Driven Design" is a longer read (dev.to says 7 minutes, which I doubt if you really would like to follow his argumentation) but a very useful one. Afterwards you might be starting to think whether it is still a good idea to share code in your specific context.

Emma Wedekind describes "How I Gained 65,000 Twitter Followers In One Year". One key fact which she mentions is to post content consistently. I think this a very good advise which I try to follow myself after getting back on track with blogging by simple posting these weekly sum ups of things I have read.

From my point of view it is very important that you are willing to disagree with someone even though she or he is your supervisor if you can't follow their arguments or might think they have overlooked something. A good way to approach your way to this disagree is written by Amy Gallo in her article"How to Disagree with Someone More Powerful than You".

Since Microsoft Ignite took place this year I was thinking of how to explain the term Citizen Developer to someone. I think my colleague Paul Heisterkamp wrote something (Link) which pretty much nailed it.

Figure: Citizen Developer/Every developer

Nevertheless I have some additions to the beforementioned text. From my point of view Pro Developers/Enterprise Developers in this context should focus on delivering kind of Lego bricks (in a way of building blocks which can be stacked together) to the Citizen Developers so that they can create a solution for their specific problem.

In addition Pro Developers/Enterprise Developers should also focus on building new skills which can't be automated in the future. But what are skills which can't be automated in the future? The article Are You Developing Skills That Won’t Be Automated? pretty much sums it up from my point of view even though not especially for developers.

After reading the article in my opinion Pro Developers/Enterprise Developers should always focus on creating solutions which add business value and moreover understand what problems people are trying to solve.
Therefore they should aid their colleagues/customers which are Citizen Developers by understanding their needs and providing solution blocks so that they can then create solutions as mentioned before for their problems on their own.

What do you think on this interpretation and outlook for the future of (Pro/Enterprise) developers?

Bisher waren Inhalte auf dieser Seite rein in Englisch verfügbar. Dies wird für den Großteil der Inhalte auch so bleiben. Allerdings habe ich in der Vergangenheit gemerkt, dass ich manche technischen und auch nicht technischen Inhalte in Deutsch veröffentlichen würde. Häufig weil diese nur einen Bezug zu Deutschland haben oder weil die technischen Texte, die ich referenzieren möchte, nur auf Deutsch verfügbar sind.

Daher gibt es jetzt auch die "/de" URL.

Die Newsfeeds sind beide getrennt verfügbar. Falls jemand Interesse an Inhalten beider Sprachen hat, müssen auch beide RSS-Feeds abonniert werden.

Today everyone in software development should be doing CI/CD or at least know what it is. Three Common Pitfalls of CI/CD, and How to Avoid Them shows three pitfalls which you should not fall into when doing so.

Maybe someone who is reading about Kubernetes has seen the term »Service Mesh«. The Service Mesh: What Every Software Engineer Needs to Know about the World's Most Over-Hyped Technology explains what you need to know on this topic.

To know patterns is always useful when working as a developer/software architect. Options Pattern in .NET Core shows how you can use the former mentioned pattern to register your dependencies in an ASP.NET Core application.

If you liked what you read about dealing with the options pattern but don't have any experience in .NET Learn .NET Core is just the right article for you.

From my point view anyone working in a field where one needs to keep their knowledge up to date needs to embrace lifelong learning. Upgrade your learning + an example study plan for data structures and algorithms shows a great strategy how you can improve your learning game. #AlwaysBeLearning

Azure Functions got some new features. Jeremy Likness shows how you can facilitate all these features in his blog post Serverless HTTP With Durable Functions.

Very interesting read on the top 10 areas of app development which are being reshaped by Power Apps. Power Apps Top 10: innovation areas that are reshaping app development.

Just a month after Hacktoberfest Microsoft Azure Functions announces its #25DaysOfServerless challenge. You can find all the details here: Introducing #25DaysOfServerless, an Azure Functions Challenge

Baseline of The epistemology of software quality is the following quote:

You could make people feel like they’re important, because people are important. No method, tool, or language matters nearly as much as our own minds.

Interested in knowing what happens inside your brain when you feel stressed? Valentin Sawadski has written a nice sum up and some more effects in his article Brain Chemistry For Developers - What exactly is happening in your brain that makes you feel stressed, happy and tired at work?