Episode 159: myNewsWrap – Microsoft, GitHub and SAP

Welcome to this week's edition of myNewsWrap, news from the world of Microsoft, GitHub, SAP ... and the world in between. The focus of my newsletter is the application development and all things around that can improve our lives as developers.

Let's dive into the news and explore what came up this week that can help us to build better solutions for our customers.

Microsoft Universe

First we take a look at the Microsoft universe and what crossed my path there.

Microsoft Ignite

Of course this weeks prominent topic in the Microsoft universe ... Microsoft Ignite and the announcements:

• Full Keynote: Satya Nadella at Microsoft Ignite 2023
• MICROSOFT IGNITE - BOOK OF NEWS
• The age of copilots
• Cloud Native Innovations with Mark Russinovich | Studio41

Serverless - Functions, SWA and Azure Container Apps

Apps need to run somewhere and a very convenient way to run them is serverless. What came up this week in this space?

Azure Functions and Static Web Apps (SWA)

• Azure Functions - Ignite 2023 update by Eamon O'Reilly
• GA: Azure Functions supports .NET 8 in the isolated worker model - the Azure Functions team sticks to their promise
• Azure Functions brings new flexibility with scale, VNet and long execution time aka Flex Consumption Plan
• GA: Stateful entities in Durable Functions on the isolated worker model for .NET

Azure Container Apps

• Build Intelligent Apps and Microservices with Azure Container Apps by Daria Grigoriu
• Resiliency policies now available in Azure Container Apps by Nick Greenfield
• Public preview: Azure Container Apps adds native support for CNCF Buildpacks to automatically containerize your code

Dapr

Having containers is nice but everything (well ... nearly everything 😉) gets better with Dapr as an outstanding tool for app development in the container-based area. Here we go what might be worth a look:

• Diagrid Launches Catalyst, a Serverless, Fully-Managed Dapr Offering by Thomas Betts

Developer Platform

This section collects all news touching the topic of a developer platform. Fuzzy term but here you find news on topics that make the life of developers easier beyond pure development be it Infrastructure as Code, GitHub and more like the Azure Developer CLI.

Infrastructure as Code

• Understanding Terraform Dependencies on Azure - Terraform on Azure Part 5 by Ahmed Muhi
• Testing Framework in Terraform 1.6: A deep-dive

GitHub

GitHub comes with a blast of new features and enhancements every week. Here are my top 5 news from GitHub that you should check out:

• Universe’s key takeaway: Innovate better with AI-powered workflows on a single, unified platform by Inbal Shani
• Security best practices for authors of GitHub Actions by Matthew Manning
• GitHub Availability Report: October 2023 by Jakub Oleksy
• Dependabot will no longer automatically re-run failed jobs when package manifest changes
• Dependabot auto-triage rules support CVE IDs and GHSA IDs

Want to see all news around GitHub? I recommend to have a look at GitHub's blog site as well as at its change log to get the complete overview.

Azure Developer CLI

Close to my heart as essence of how to make the developer life easier is the Azure Developer CLI. What's up in this area?

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) – November 2023 Release by Savannah Ostrowski

The best of the "rest"

No matter how the structure of this newsletter is crafted, there is always something that does not perfectly fit. This section is dedicated to topics that I think are worth reading but did not fit into the structure from above:

• .NET Aspire seems to be a very intersting topic:
  • Introducing .NET Aspire: Simplifying Cloud-Native Development with .NET 8 by Glenn Condron
  • Building Cloud Native apps with .NET 8 | .NET Conf 2023
• AKS Welcomes you to Ignite 2023 by Jorge Palma

🐱‍👤 SAP and Microsoft - Combining both worlds

Combining Microsoft with SAP can lead to incredible new applications. Let's enter the twilight zone (no worries the ninja cat is with us) between SAP and Microsoft and see what's up here:

• SAP on Azure Video Podcast #168 - The one with the November Events (Goran Condric & Holger Bruchelt)

And of course a channel that you should subscribe to if you are working with SAP and Microsoft is the SAP on Azure hosted by Holger Bruchelt and friends.

Learning

One important (and imho best part) of the job of a developer is the continuous learning. Here are some interesting learning resources that go beyond vendor-specific technology:

• How big is a Microservice in Serverless?
• Decarbonize Software 2023

Golo's Corner

One great resource for becoming a better developer and reflecting about our profession is the high-quality content of the native web GmbH by Golo Roden. This week the following topics were on the list:

• Das YouTube-Paradoxon // deutsch
• Besser spät als nie: Golo lernt Angular?! // deutsch

Make sure to subscribe to Golo's YouTube channels:

• German channel
• English channel

And Golo's personal channel with a new series - not IT, but about an important topic that is not too much talk about in the IT world:

• Mathe ist (k)ein Scheißfach … (warum Mathe-Unterricht ein Problem hat) // deutsch

Events

And last but not least heads up for these upcoming events:

• KubeCon Chicago Key Takeaways by Daniel Bryant
• Cloud Native Weekly - Ep 21 - Recapping Kubecon NA 23!

And with this enjoy your weekend and have a successful next week!