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.NET Annotated Monthly | November 2019
Here comes November! Residents of the world, we are all sailing fast toward the end of the year!
In November 1983, Microsoft released Microsoft Word, then called Multi-Tool Word and made free trials available through PC World magazine.
.NET news
Microsoft announced .NET Core 3.1 Preview 1. ASP.NET Core and EF Core also released updates.
.NET tutorials and tips
Goodbye Javascript! Build an Authenticated Web App in C# with Blazor + ASP.NET Core 3.0 – This post by Heather Downing discusses a much-wanted technology by .NET developers who don’t want to write much JavaScript.
Convert A C# Object To Almost Any Format – Khalid Abuhakmeh shows us how to do some cool conversions between C# and a number of data formats. Very handy!
Exploring the non-nullable type warnings in C# 8 – Non-nullables are new to C# 8, and Tore Nestenius lays out some points of interest about the warnings that come with them. Posts like these help out a great deal when you come across that compiler message that makes no sense.
The Repository Pattern isn’t an Anti-Pattern; You’re just doing it wrong – Is Brian Bu just picking a fight? No way – there’s some great info about how people over-engineer the repository pattern and how you can keep it efficient.
A Closer Look at C# 8 Interfaces and Interfaces in C# 8 are a Bit of a Mess – Jeremy Clark writes multiple articles on C# 8 interfaces and how you can use them more effectively.
C# 8.0 and .NET Standard 2.0 – Doing Unsupported Things – Stuart Lang tries out a few experiments that are interesting, but definitely not something you should count on Microsoft to support. Implement these at your own risk!
Building and Securing Web APIs with ASP.NET Core 3.0 – Take a peek at this good post by Andrea Chiarelli about secure web APIs.
Mail Merge in Word Documents Using C# and VB.NET: The Ultimate Guide – This is definitely something many developers must do to automate Office apps for their coworkers who aren’t in IT.
Get to Know Entity Framework and PostgreSQL – PostgreSQL is a popular database for which there aren’t enough blog posts about. Thanks Terje Kolderup for this piece involving PostgreSQL and EF.
New features in .NET Core 3.0 on Linux – .NET developers on Linux, here’s one for you by Tom Deseyn! Catch the newest features in .NET Core 3 on Linux.
The Battle of C# to JSON Serializers in .NET Core 3 – A thorough comparison of about 6 different JSON serializers and how they behave and perform by Michael Shpilt. There’s a lot of good information in this one including benchmarks and detailed summaries of the serializers.
How to make Web API with ASP.NET Core 3.0 and MongoDB – Nandu Singh walks readers step-by-step through the process of creating a Web API that works with data in a MongoDB database.
FREE EBOOK!! Who doesn’t love free books?
An Introduction to Building Applications with Blazor – Michael Washington’s book describes how to get started creating applications using the newest .NET framework technology, Blazor!
Events, community and culture
Microsoft’s Ignite Conference is coming up soon in Orlando, Florida, USA!
Balancing Accountability and Empathy – On his podcast by Jonathan Cutrell, says that accountability is “the gap between what we said we would do and what we did”, not simply a punitive technique for dealing with coworkers who find themselves in that gap. That’s where empathy comes in. Combine the two, and you have a great formula for a high-functioning team. Keep in mind, empathy is a skill. It can be learned. Pro tip: Science shows that reading literary fiction improves your empathy.
What Do You Do? Why Your Identity Should Be More Than Your Day Job – Kat Boogaard reminds us that it’s easy to typecast ourselves into a single life type, and wrap our entire entity around it. Then it becomes paralyzing to try new things and can lead to burnout. Hey devs – it’s OK to be more than a human compiler. Take joy in being a complex person who likes more than software development!
This one’s from a few months back but absolutely worth sharing. Compassionate Coding: Software Development for Humans by April Wensel. It’s her keynote from Voxxed Athens 2019. April promotes the concept of compassionate coding, and how to use empathy to build products for everyone.
Random interesting and cool stuff
Check out these excellent articles about development methodologies, Agile practices, and general software development topics. They’re not strictly .NET, but they’re still relevant and valuable for .NET developers.
Integrating Security and Testing Practices – It seems to be the least fun, but you know you need to do it. Start with this nice writeup on Security + Testing by Sylvia Killinen.
Tips for Technical Writing – Martin Gaston tosses out some tips for the writers out there.
How advanced are your DevSecOps practices? – An excellent smackdown by Vanessa Wegner, in which she asks you to evaluate your DevSecOps knowledge.
The Bizarre World of Microsoft Ads And then we have this gem, a video that shows off many of the Microsoft advertisements and videos over the years. You’ll cry laughing. Or just cry. Either way, these are hilarious (and a little weird). You’ll never get those 9 minutes back, but it’s definitely worth it.
Doc Norton nails it regarding software re-writes: “Every time a company proudly announces that they ‘Rewrote X from the ground up!’ all I hear is ‘We replaced all the bugs we knew about with ones we don’t know about!’ – John Sundell”
And finally…
Here’s a chance to catch up on JetBrains news that you might have missed:
Both the Rider EAP and the Resharper EAP (Early Access Preview) are available!
Join Maarten, Matthias, and Matt from The Developer Advocacy team at JetBrains Night in Paris, France and JetBrains Day in Istanbul,Turkey. JetBrains events are a great way to watch excellent presentations on a variety of software development topics to keep your skills up to date.
Catch my webinar, “Building an ASP.NET Core app from Start to Finish” on 25-November 2019, 16:00 – 17:00 CET.
Find your perfect database development style with Rider – Another one from me in the series on style and writing readable code.
Better Xamarin Development with Rider for Mac – Webinar Recording – Dylan Berry shows a few Xamarin tricks.
Want to run an external tool from Rider but don’t know how? Maarten Balliauw has you covered!
Check out this fantastic offer! CODE Magazine is offering a free subscription to JetBrains customers!
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 rachel.appel@jetbrains.com, or drop me a message via Twitter.
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