Lately, I’ve been paying more attention to what’s happening in the AI space. Maybe because of all the hype that surrounds it. Maybe because of the anxiety of whether AI will take my software development job. That's why I’ve decided to spend some spare time during the Xmas holiday to explore the state of AI software development tools. This email combines: My 1+ years of experience using a paid version of GitHub Copilot. 5+ hours of YouTube videos I’ve consumed in the last 2 weeks. So, let’s...
5 months ago • 4 min read
Today's issue is brought to you by the C# 13 and .NET 9 – Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals. Build confidence in creating professional and high-performance web applications using the latest technologies in C# 13 and .NET 9 by Mark Price. Find out more here: C# 13 and .NET 9 Yesterday, We had a company Xmas party. Before dinner at a restaurant, we went to the escape room event. If you are unfamiliar with escape rooms, they're interactive puzzle experiences where you and your...
5 months ago • 4 min read
2 weeks ago, .NET 9 was released. If you haven’t had time to read the official release docs, don’t worry. I spent 1 hour investigating what's new in .NET 9. So you don't have to. Here are the top 10 improvements for C#, ASP.NET Core, and EF Core. 1. LINQ Index LINQ has always been an extremely useful tool for .NET developers. However, with .NET 9, LINQ comes with 3 new methods. Let's begin with the LINQ Index. The Index method places every collection element against its position within that...
6 months ago • 3 min read
2 weeks ago, I went to sleep at the same time as my 2 kids.It sounded good on paper: Fall asleep before 9 PM. Wake up in the morning full of energy like a young bull. But in reality? I couldn’t sleep. I was tossing and turning in bed like a fish out of water.I resisted the temptation of using my phone until 10 PM. But then I started to scroll on Reddit. As I was scrolling, I found this question: “What are some of the craziest security vulnerabilities you've uncovered?” And this in particular...
7 months ago • 2 min read
Today's issue is brought to you by the Tools and Skills for .NET 8. Explore key areas like debugging, testing, and intelligent app development. Strengthening your .NET expertise can open up new opportunities in your career. Find out more here: Learn more about Tools and Skills for .NET 8 Exceptions. Nobody likes when they occur. Yet everyone throws them left, right, and center. Heck, even .NET throws an exception every time you use a particular type incorrectly. In this email, I’ll review...
8 months ago • 2 min read
Fun Friday stat: 4 out of 5 developers enjoy the code review process. (ok, that may or may not be entirely true) But if you feel like you are beating each other with the stick during every code review, today's email will help. I will guide you through 10 principles for legendary code reviews. Let’s dive in. 1. Divide and rule Is it funny, but I could summarize code reviews to the following process: 10 lines changed = 10 comments 1000 lines changed = 0 comments, LGTM (looks good to me) The...
8 months ago • 3 min read
Some developers complain that the Entity Framework is horribly slow. But what they don’t tell you is that they use EF Core to return: 25 table fields, 1,000,000 rows at once, including data from all related tables. If you learn how to use EF Core properly, it’s a powerful tool for querying the database. Here are 7 tips for more efficient EF Core queries. 1) Projection Projection means you only select the specific columns you need. Instead of retrieving the entire entities. This dramatically...
9 months ago • 1 min read
Hi, Last week, I started explaining the 14-step Web API cheat sheet you can use to design amazing Web APIs. And explained the first 7 practices. As a reminder, here is the list of 14 good practices: Consistent naming Request object for POST data Error handling Input validation Pagination Filtering Avoid long-running HTTP API request Meaningful response codes Implement security measures Caching Versioning Rate limiting API testing Documentation This week, we’ll cover the rest. 8. Meaningful...
10 months ago • 3 min read
"Magic". Despised by developers (magic strings, numbers). But adored by football fans: A pass that no one saw coming. An assist that no defender was able to prevent. A goal that makes you go from devastated to delirious in 1 second. There were many magic moments during the recent Euro 2024. However, one moment that stuck in my head was this: During the penalty shoutouts in a match against Switzerland, England's goalkeeper had a cheat sheet on a bottle. With instructions on defending a penalty...
10 months ago • 4 min read
#1 underestimated risk in .NET projects: Libraries you add to your code. Yes. They are necessary in every project. Yes. They speed up development massively. But, I've faced many maintenance issues while working with libraries in the past 12 years. The most expensive time it happened to me? I was working on a project where I had to parse incoming Excel files. For that, I used EPPlus, a popular open-source library for handling Excel files. The library was great and made development faster and...
11 months ago • 2 min read
