🕵️‍♀️ Using Secrets in .NET Core Console Applications Console applications remain one of the least documented parts of the .NET Core experience (compared to ASP.NET), and I’m always happy to share content on that topic. Why are console applications important? If you’re in an event-driven microservices world in .NET, using a Console application to connect to your message queue and receive messages and put them into a database of some sort is an integral part of the work; as are services that respond to events but don’t necessarily expose HTTP APIs.

🔨 Erik J markets his EF Core Power Tools Visual Studio Extension I did not know this existed. I mean, I vaguely had heard of it, but had no idea what EF Core Power Tools would even do. Luckily Erik shared a link to his extension, which according to the download page, lets you Reverse engineer a context and classes from an existing SQL Server Database, has diagramming support, right-click migration support in Visual Studio, and more.

🔌 The .NET Download Site had an outage last week and there is not, and I quote, “There is no workaround using Azure DevOps.”
Can you imagine the protocols Microsoft put in place to push Azure at all times?

👨‍💼 “Mention Azure.” 
👨‍💻”But sir, this is an outage on our public website.” 
👨‍💼”MENTION AZURE.”

🦜 David Fowler tweets about some new additions to ASP.NET in C# 10 and .NET Core 6: Default Global Usings, File Scoped Namespaces, and a “minimal” Hosting API.

🐈 Nicole Express blogs about the cause and fix for a long standing ALF Bug. Yes. That adorable animatronic 80s TV star that had its own movie and video game, and liked to eat cats.

🧟‍♂️ What if Github Copilot worked like a real programmer Not listed: Copilot engaging in a flame war over whether The Last Jedi was the worst Star Wars movie ever made, and reminding other programmers that programming is a meritocracy, while failing to see how self-serving that statement is. This is satire, of course. The Last Jedi is arguably the best Star Wars movie ever made.

🍪 If You use Chocolately, a fresh install of Visual Studio can inadvertantly nuke your nuget package source configuration oops.

🐢 How To: Use Azure AD Powershell to Work With Extension Properties (User Attributes) This blog post does what it says on the tin, but for you the use case here is you need to use Powershell to retrieve and set extension properties from Azure AD. If you know what that sentence means, please reach out and let me know. Thanks.

🐿 On July 27th, 1993, Windows NT 3.1 was released. I know it wasn’t NT, but Windows 3.1 was glorious, but only for me because that’s the first OS I played Chip’s Challenge on. Also Chip’s Challenge and its sequel is available on Steam. You’re welcome.

❤️ Brent Ozar has released an update to his First Responder and Consultant’s Toolkit. Ok, naming aside. If you use SQL Server, and you’re a DBA or even a C# developer that needs to interact with Sql Server,you will want to download, install, and run these scripts. They’re very useful in understanding performance issues in SQL Server, in understanding if your table structure and indexes are optimal, and helping you resolve emergent issues with SQL Server. These scripts should be in every team’s toolkit that uses SQL Server.

🍭David Lee Roth retells the famous “brown M&Ms” story that Van Halen used in its Rider. The reason they used it is not what you think. It’s well worth your time to listen to. Thanks to @textfiles on Twitter for sharing a link to this.

🆙 Visual Studio 2022 will not be able to build .NET Applications that target anything in .NET 4 before .NET 4.5.2. The writing is on the wall: Upgrade your framework, folks.

📢 Dapr v1.3 has been released and this minor update includes several minor updates but still no explanation of why drop-in-replacement architecture is such a ‘win’. Developing to the Lowest Common Denominator gets you… The most boring and undifferentiated features of all of your options.

✈️ I asked the CEO of Jetbrains for an update to the Solarwinds/Team city mess and he obliged. If you’re new to this, the NYTimes ran an article that claimed — anonymously, of course — that TeamCity was why the Solarwinds attack happened. Because of that, some companies and organizations have dropped using Jetbrains products. We hadn’t heard from the CEO of Jetbrains since their ‘update’ several months ago, and I asked them to let us know if anything ahd changed. They obliged by reinforcing that the NYTimes article probably shouldn’t have been published in the first place.

🔈 .NET Conf Call for Speakers is Open I have submitted a session that will undoubtedly be turned down because I don’t mention Azure in the abstract at all.

🤯 C# 10 will also support var as a lambda expression initializer, and I’ve hit the point where I’m now souring on var. I have no idea what that type is or well be, and I can’t see how that’s a good thing. @ me @gortok on twitter if you think I’m wrong, and why.

💸 Marten, the Generic Host Builder in .Net Core, and why this could be the golden age for OSS in .Net. Jeremy Miller spells out why the addition of Generic Host Builder has made his life better as an OSS Maintainer. Personally I think the problems with OSS in .NET are mostly commercial interference by Microsoft; and I’m not so sure we can fix that.

😥 Abel Wang passed away last week He was a Principal Program Manager, and Technical Assistant to the CTO of Azure. Take a moment and read the accompanying link to learn more about Abel and his life.

Is your .NET Team thinking about transitioning to microservices? Take my free five day course at https://movetomicro.services.