.NET Annotated Monthly – August 2019

Rachel Appel

Welcome to the newest newsletter from JetBrains, .NET Annotated Monthly! This newsletter is hosted by Rachel Appel, a Developer Advocate at JetBrains, with occasional updates from other JetBrains Developer Advocates.

In this newsletter you’ll be treated to .NET (and related) news, tips and tricks, cool stuff, community information and everything you need to keep up to date with the .NET world. Occasionally I’ll toss in some non-.NET developer articles too. So let’s get started!

.NET news

• .NET Core 3 Preview 7 – Here’s the official announcement stating that .NET Core 3 is nearing completion! Get your compilers ready!
• .NET Core 3 Preview 7 updates – Check out all the latest updates in the latest preview of .NET Core.
• .NET Core support policy – Microsoft has released its support policy for .NET Core, including release cycles and cadence, release lifecycles, and pretty much everything you need to know about their release and support for .NET.
• Blazor is here! In case you missed it, back in April, the .NET team has released this new technology called Blazor as an official preview! What is this Blazor thing, you ask? It sprang from an experimental project that uses WebAssembly to enable you to do full-stack development with ASP.NET Core. This means you can write code on the server, and have it produce code that runs on the client.

.NET tutorials and tips

• Realtime Blazor Tic-Tac-Toe game – Bot vs Multiplayer using signalR – Blazor and SignalR are all the rage! So Jeeva Subburaj shows us how to build this cool little tic-tac-toe game with Blazor and SignalR.
• Deploy to Azure – Phil Haack shows us how to deploy from a zip file to Azure. I think this makes Phil a hipster.
• Task vs. ValueTask – Learn from the .NET team! Cecil Phillip, Stephen Toub, and Rich Lander show us how to properly use Task and ValueTask, and what makes them different. This is something that trips up developers frequently.
• Developing Web Applications in .NET (Different Approaches and Current State) – Damir Arh created this comprehensive article that details the various approaches to web development in .NET.
• The Top 5 DevOps Automation Tools .NET Developers Should Know – Heather Downing is right! These most certainly are 5 DevOps automation tools that you need to know about if you’re into .NET development. You don’t need to know every detail, but what they are and what they do.
• Design patterns in C# – The composite pattern – This is one post in a series in which Camel Eve blogs about patterns in C#. C# developers rely on patterns so don’t miss this one.
• Create interactive documentation with the new Try .NET template – Read docs. Switch to IDE and code. Back to docs. Back to code. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just try some of that code right in the docs? Amazingly, you can! Akshita Agarwal shows you how!
• Great code review feedback – Nobody likes to get a crappy code review, and many people hate reviewing code, for fear that their valid critiques may come across the wrong way, or that their critiques aren’t really valid at all. No matter what the pain is, Dr. Michaela Greiler eases it in this post.
• Versioning limitations in .NET – Jon Skeet says “I believe the .NET ecosystem has a versioning problem that’s currently not being recognized and addressed.” Woooo! Them’s fightin’ words, Jon! What do you think about his critique?
• .NET Core 3 for the Desktop – Nice CODE Magazine article by Rick Strahl about desktop dev with .NET Core.
• Series on feature flags – This is a whopping multi-post project by Andrew Lock that goes into details about what Feature Flags and Feature Management are, as well as how and when you should implement it.
• A-Zs of ASP.NET sneak peek! –  Here’s a preview of Shahed Chowdhuri’s A-Zs of ASP.NET book.
• ASP.NET Core 2.2 Succinctly – Simone Chiaretta and Ugo Lattanzi teamed up to write this awesome book on ASP.NET Core 2.2. Free eBook!
• Unity Game Development Succinctly by Jim Perry highlights the basics of game development with Unity. Free eBook!

Events, community and culture

• Free summer camps for students – Nerd camps for kids! I LOVE IT! Microsoft is hosting them at its retail stores. If you have little ones, check this out, and start their love for all things STEM at a Nerd Camp!
• Webinar – From F# to JavaScript with Fable – Hosted by JetBrains, presented by community speaker Florian Verdonck, who also helps out organizing FableConf.
• .NET Conf –  This is Microsoft’s 100% virtual event. This year, .NET Core 3.0 launches at .NET Conf on September 23-25. You don’t want to miss it, and keep an eye out for JetBrains speakers! 
• Microsoft events – Check out various Microsoft and .NET related events going on around the world.
• How to be great – Did you ever wonder what your path to success might be? It’s not what you think. Steph Smith shows you how little things add up over time to success.
• How to delegate tasks – Team leads and PMs know that task delegation can be a challenge. In this post, Maddy Osman shows us that it doesn’t have to be so difficult.

Random interesting and cool stuff

• Some good advice about UI design – Stop saying things like “I’m a developer, I don’t need UI design knowledge”, because with that attitude your software won’t be as good as it can be. Check out this video by Laura Butler that gives good UI advice you need. You don’t need to be a full-time designer, just know the basics.
• C# or Java? TypeScript or JavaScript? Machine learning based classification of programming languages – C# or Java? TypeScript or JavaScript? Put your fancy pants on and read what Kavita Ganesan has to say about machine learning based classification of programming languages.
• The Foenix Project – It’s not really .NET, but it’s super cool nonetheless. Plus, a lot of us in the .NET community are into retro computing. And for those who are, check out this new-retro computer, a spiritual successor to the Commodore 8-bit computers designed and built by Stefany Allaire.

And finally…

Here’s a chance to catch up on JetBrains news that you might have missed:

• Both Rider and R# Ultimate launched Early Access Programs (EAP) for 2019.2!
  Rider EAP 2019.2
  R# Ultimate EAP 2019.2
• Long read: Where we are with “out of process” ReSharper – Even the tl;dr version of this has a tl;dr! Grab a coffee and settle in for this one. Our own Matt Ellis explains in depth all about the challenges with moving Resharper to its own process, which will enhance performance greatly.
• Work effectively with JSON using Rider – In this shameless bit of self-promotion, check this post that I wrote about working with JSON. We all have to work with JSON, so let Rider make it easy.
• 5 Reasons I’m Going Almost Full Rider after Using Visual Studio for 9 Years – Olatunji Owolabi explains his development journey and how he ended up using mostly Rider! I can’t blame you, Olatunji!

If you have any interesting or useful .NET or general programming news to share via .NET Annotated Monthly, leave a comment here, email me at [firstname.lastname]@jetbrains.com (Rachel Appel), or drop me a message via Twitter.

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