Getting to Know Containers

Containers have sparked genuine interest over the last few years. As a developer, I’ve had my fair share of “It Works on My Machine” days, where I spent an interesting amount of my time trying to identify why my code doesn’t run in a given environment. Did I make a mistake? Did someone else make a mistake? Uncertainty, risk and the Human Factor definitely make for adrenaline packed all-nighters.

Getting to Know Azure Mobile App

Microsoft Azure Mobile App has recently gone GA (General Availability) and has definitely captured my attention. Mobile App is a tremendous accelerator that enables us to go from an idea to a functional prototype quickly. Then, we can continue to build on that initial investment to create a robust production ready app. Finally, using Visual Studio Team Services and Release Management, we can publish our apps to our favorite app Stores.

Why Mobile App

These are reasons why you should consider Mobile App on your next project. They certainly contributed to my agility throughout my adventure.

• Build native and cross platform apps
• Connect to your enterprise systems
• Connect to SaaS APIs easily
• Build offline-ready apps with sync
• Push Notifications to millions in seconds
• Automatically scale-out to handle any incoming customer load.
• Build low friction server-side REST services.
• Benefit from a simplified data access layer.
• Deliver functional prototypes with minimal effort.

I Hated JavaScript

Up to a week ago, I hated JavaScript. Working through multiple revisions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera… had made me realize that it was best to leave client side development to those that thrived on it. Over the years, I read awesome books like JavaScript: The Good Parts. And truly enjoyed the read, but it was not enough to make me like JavaScript. As you may have understood from the blog’s title, my aversion against JavaScript changed. This post, is all about the how and the why I changed my mind.

Download All Sessions in MID Quality

$feedUrl = 'https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Connect-event-2015/RSS'
 
[Environment]::CurrentDirectory=(Get-Location -PSProvider FileSystem).ProviderPath
function Get-Media
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Object]
        $url,
        [Object]
        $title
    )
     
    $u = New-Object System.Uri($url)
    $name = $title
    $extension = [System.IO.Path]::GetExtension($u.Segments[-1])
    $fileName = $name + $extension

    $fileName = $fileName -replace "’", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace "\?", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace ":", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace '/', ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace ",", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace '"', ''

    $fileName
            
    if (Test-Path($fileName)) {
        Write-Host 'Skipping file, already downloaded' -ForegroundColor Yellow
    }
    else
    {
        Invoke-WebRequest $url -OutFile $fileName
    }
}
  
$feed=[xml](New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString($feedUrl)
 
foreach($i in $feed.rss.channel.item) {
    foreach($m in $i.group){
        foreach($u in $m.content `
                | Where-Object { `
                        $_.url -like '*mid.mp4' `
                     } | Select-Object -Property @{Name='url'; Expression = {$_.url}}, `
                                                 @{Name='title'; Expression = {$i.title}})
        {
            Get-Media -url $u.url -title $u.title
        }             
    }
}

Windows Azure Web Sites From Skeptical to Believer

When Microsoft announced Windows Azure Web Sites I was lucky to rapidly gain access to the preview, which led me to write a preliminary Windows Azure Web Sites Review.

Initially I was confused about the ideas behind Windows Azure Web Sites, because Cloud Services give me a finer grain control over various aspects of the Instances. Cloud Services also provide Production and Staging environments, which are not available in Windows Azure Web Sites. To top it off, Windows Azure Web Sites lack Remote Desktop connectivity. I must admit that in the beginning, I had a hard time finding reasons to choose Windows Azure Web Sites over Cloud Services (PaaS).

Windows Azure Web Sites, started off as being perfect for deployments that didn’t require custom windows configurations and were perfect for teams who don’t use Visual Studio. By greatly abstracting away the concept of Roles, it opened up the platform to a greater audience and most importantly Windows Azure Web Sites consume  other Windows Azure services like Windows Azure Storage Services.

Almost a year later, Windows Azure Web Sites has grown up and above all, I am now a true believer!  In June 2013,  Standard (formerly named reserved) and Free tiers have both graduated from Preview to General Availability (GA)  and are backed by the standard 99.9% monthly SLA. The Shared tier remains in preview with not charges.

Windows Azure Web Sites have come a long way!

My Recommendations For Windows Azure Literature

In 2010 I bought a Kindle and it changed my life! Since then I’ve been catching up on books I should have read years ago. Back then, reading technical books meant carrying bulky/ heavy printed books in my bag. The day I got my first kindle, is the day I started reading again!

Since then, I read quite a few books! Below are some of the books that got me hooked on Windows Azure!