Findings and thingies

As you’ve come to expect, this Book of News is your resource for all the announcements we’re making at Microsoft Build. Here you will find details about enhancements and integrations spanning the entire Microsoft developer platform across Visual Studio, GitHub, Microsoft Azure, Power Platform, Windows and Microsoft 365. We want to make it easier than ever for developers to go from idea, to code, to cloud—and we want to empower all developers to do more.

If you didn't had the time to attend all or even any session of Microsoft Build 2021 then the book of news is the resource to get all the news from this event and announcements made by Microsoft.

Whilst some people employ lightweight modelling techniques such as C4, most diagrams in use today, are what I call, somewhat derogatorily, masala diagrams. No hard feelings, I call my own diagrams like this. Why masala? Because they are informal; they cover multiple dimensions at once, they may be both structural and behavioural, logical and physical. They are often a mishmash of the 4+1 architectural model’s views.

I must admit that I never liked UML for describing systems architecture. I can't name any special reason for this. However, I really like the term masala diagrams for diagrams illustrated in the linked article. From my point of view these kinds of diagrams feed the needs of the separate roles in a business context. And somehow everybody looking at these kind of diagrams gets a grasp of how the system is architected and what its intension is.

Even though I still see why UML has been appealing in the first place to describe business models.

The same “brain drain” applies to any potential distractor even when they aren’t actively distracting us. Research in cognitive psychology tells us that we automatically pay attention to things that are habitually relevant to us, even when we are focused on something else.

Maybe it's time to get rid of even more apps on your smartphone.

Most important, it’s time for a new mindset. Businesses should focus more on building toward a better future and less on assessing where things are. Making this shift means embracing the unknown and accepting complexity.

This. Don't ask your employees once a year what they think about their professional environment. Talk to them, look where things can be improved. And work together with them to tackle these issues.

In an interview with NPR, Facebook's director of privacy and public policy Steve Satterfield said Apple's forthcoming alert is an attempt to undercut the business model used by Facebook and other ad-supported free apps.

I really hope that this will create a backclash for Facebook because people will start to recognize that they are not the users but the product of this plattform ("If You're Not Paying For It, You Become The Product").

This "always-open self" Wells speaks of, though admirable, doesn’t always guarantee a happy time of things. Often it is exhausting. Often it is heartbreaking. But no worthwhile life ever had it different. Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Nothing to add from my side...

To become great at technology strategy, start by getting good at making boring plans. Get clear about the problem you are overcoming with your plans.

As mentioned before it is good to use boring technology but it is also a good idea to make boring plans.

So I’m making a case here that you should tend to prefer mature things, and you should try not to use too many things.

But it’s not an absolute principle. Obviously sometimes it does make sense to add new technology to your stack. And it can even make sense to use a weird new thing.

It is always good to stick to/use technology which has a proven trackrecord and is known well by you. But as always your mileage may vary and as always the answer in technology is: "It depends".

What you really want is a repeatable, automatic pipeline that takes your code, merges it with everyone else's, runs some tests, deploys it to a test server, runs some more testing and validation, then automatically promotes it to production once you know it works.

Simply obey the rule that you never ever should do use this tool in any production environment.

As cloud adoption rises, so does cloud "sticker shock." That tremendous savings seen from the switch to up-front CapEx investments in information technology to subscription mode soon gets soured as the rising monthly bills come in for services nobody knows where and when they are being used.

Although many cloud providers advertise that cost savings can be achieved, the reality then looks different in many places. Especially the distinction between CapEx and OpEx looks tempting at first glance, but in practice it often fails to meet the high expectations.