Debug and Release

Up your productivity game by using these two tricks you probably didn't know existed in Visual Studio. Being more productive F1 key Starting with the best, the F1 key. You didn't know this key did something did you, well, you'll be surprised to know that the F1 key opens up a help page on whatever you have your cursor on. Don't know what a keyword means or does, don't know what the parameters of Parallel.ForEach are, hit F1. Use that F1 key! Clicking the F1 key while your cursor is over the SameSiteMode as shown in the above screenshot, takes us to this page where we can learn more about the SameSiteMode. The task list For when you want to clean up your code base, open up the task list  and get on to fixing those bugs! The task list opens a window that shows all instances of your //TODOs (as well as other symbols in your code). You can open this window by going to View > Task List or (ctrl + \, T). Take this example. An example ...

There is really no other reason why you shouldn't be picking up these free programming books . If you don't already know where to get them, you will know in a few minutes. Packtpub.com Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Packtpub. How do I get them Create a free account at  https://www.packtpub.com Every day, visit  https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning and claim your free book. That's it! Enjoy! The books that are free are on rotation, so you never quite know what book you'll be able to read next.  During busy seasons, ie. Black Friday, Packtpub has tended to offer different promotions and I have seen the free learning page unavailable. Once the season ends, they are usually quick to resume the free book offer. Do consider purchasing a hard copy of the book or videos on the site, they can't offer these books for free and still be in business.

You've likely heard of Optimizely , or ABTasty , but what if you don't want to shell out money to do your own server-side testing? You know the benefits of server-side testing, it is invaluable . Whether you are a big shop, or small team, you can implement server-side testing today in your ASP.NET Core web application. Today, we will explore how to implement server-side testing in ASP.NET Core web applications with OSWTF . A/B testing Disclaimer: I am the author of OSWTF; it is based on work I have previously done working in an ecommerce team. The framework itself does not offer any analytics integration, as that is likely company/project-specific and can easily be added yourself. *Please be aware before the package gets released as a major release, the framework is subject to breaking changes. What is OSWTF OSWTF stands for O pen S ource W eb T esting F ramework. The framework is a very simple integration into your web applications to enable server-side testing c...

This is the easiest [and shortest] guide you'll ever find on how to choose a project to work on. Follow it to the T and you'll enjoy projects from now on. Thinking of a project idea The process Take some time away from [home]work and do something you enjoy . It can be anything. Think of a project that can help, enhance, or expedite the thing you already enjoy using what you already know how to do. Incorporate all of the requirements in your project if they aren't already there (ie. make your project use a database if it's required to do so in your project). Incorporate 1-2 extra things from this list and learn something new (teachers love that you tried to do something you were unfamiliar with). OCR Reading/writing files. Using AWS Lambda . A third-party library ( NPM libraries are good candidates, or other Javascript libraries ). A new language ( Rust ? Go ? Java ?). Create an API . Interact with social media through their APIs/SDKs. Slack ...

I love working in C#, plain and simple. C# gets the job done, but - in it's latest preview, it's becoming too terse. Let me explain. A 'nifty logo don't you say? Patterns Have you ever heard of them? Well, besides software design patterns  or if you are hungry, cookie patterns , there is something called pattern matching in C# 7 and it is pretty handy. If you've never used pattern matching before, you can check if a variable is of a certain type and assign this variable to a new variable in a single line. The example below explains how this will work. Using the is type pattern expression Perhaps I haven't given it much thought to make use of this yet, but this feature out there and it makes sense. There really isn't any indication that we are assigning a variable in the code, we aren't using an equal sign or semi colon on the line, but still, it is an easy concept to learn. This new feature in C# 7 is not any more complicated than a ...

Javascript tooling is a mess . Every time that I start a new application, I'm always asking myself how I need to setup my tooling. Thankfully, there is a sane way of setting up your tooling that won't make you want to pull your hair out once you set it up. We'll explore how to setup tooling for using NPM modules in your ASP.NET Core [2.2] applications with LibMan and Webpack 4. Modern logo of tooling The example will be simple, but sufficient, in order for you to add your complexity that is needed for your application. Source code For those that came for just the source code, you can find that right here . Overview We are building a tooling pipeline that will take NPM modules, and use webpack to bundle them. Using LibMan, we will move them into the correct directory so our ASP.NET Core application can serve them. An overview of our process we are building Installation We will be making use of webpack , LibMan  and the NPM Task Runner explorer  t...