Developer Support

Advocacy and Innovation

Uncovering The Details Of Hosting a Node Application On Azure

I was recently working on a Node JS application and I decided that Azure was the right place for me to host my application as it made it extremely easy to deploy it to production. But shortly after deploying the application I started to have questions about some of the magic that Azure was doing to make everything “just work”. This post summarizes my journey in attempting to uncover some of the magic involved in hosting a Node application on Azure.

DevOps and Waste

One of the great things we’ve learned from applying Lean to software development and operations is the notion of eliminating waste is our processes. In this article I’ll provide some background on why this is important and how to find and eliminate waste in your daily activities.

DevOps and Business Strategy

When I engage with customers I often work with developers, business analysts, managers, Operations, etc. and the discussions are invariably about tools whether they are Microsoft’s or Open Source tools. These are great topics and open up conversations around many other topics. However, most folks aren’t really talking about the reason we are trying to use these tools. All too often the tools become the shiny objects in the room which divert us from even more important topics.

DevOps Stories – An Interview with Brian Blackman of Microsoft Premier

App Dev Manager Dave Harrison talks with Brian Blackman, a Senior Consultant for Microsoft Premier. As an Azure development and DevOps consultant, he works with Independent Software Vendors (ISV), Enterprises, and Partners where his specialty is DevOps. Brian’s focus is assisting customers in establishing a vision for DevOps, assessing where they currently stand, and then working with them to develop a roadmap to attain their vision. MCTP, MCSD-C++, CSM, CSP, SAFe Agilist.

Open Source Virtual Conference

Join us in the morning for a keynote featuring John Gossman and Gabe Monroy providing insights into how Microsoft has embraced Open Source both with its own technology and our commitment to the Open Source Community. Following the keynote, we will be focused on ensuring you are set up on Azure for the remainder of the day to be able to follow along with demos throughout the 14 sessions available.

Raw threads and async lambdas

Using async methods/lambdas where they are not expected causes unexpected problems. The typical example I discuss with people is TaskFactory.StartNew() because its an easy way to create Tasks and some people reach for that instead of Task.Run(), but I recently came across some code hitting the same problem while creating threads the traditional way.

Combining iterator blocks and async methods in C#

One of the best traits of a well-designed system is composability. Large systems are complex and hierarchical and one of the best ways to fight accidental complexity is to compose a system from smaller components. You write and test each component independently then you glue them together to achieve a higher-level behavior. Programming ...