cloud developer experience with simon waight
I'm coming in hot with Microsoft Ignite 2025 session recommendations! As usual I've spent some time reviewing the session catalog to find what I think will be most interesting. Check out the post for more details!
When I moved my blog from Wordpress to a template based on Next.js, I knew that I'd be have to pick up some maintenance tasks that I had previously delegated to the Wordpress platform. One of those tasks was going to be ensuring my codebase was up to date with the latest security patches and updates for Node.js. See how I used GitHub Copilot to help me with this task.
Microsoft Build is one of the key events in my annual calendar, so I couldn't miss the chance to share the Build 2025 sessions I think developers won't want to miss.
Ignite is back for 2024, and I've taken the time to review the session catalog to pull out the gems for developers in ANZ. Check out the post for more details!
I was recently invited to present at the Microsoft Reactor on what you should consider when taking your Generative AI apps from proof-of-concept to production. This post goes into a bit more detail and provides useful links for content from the talk.
Since 2021 the software development industry has increasingly been headed in a direction where AI-assisted software development is the norm. Many developers already build solutions using assistants such as GitHub Copilot in their code editor of choice. GitHub is extending their vision with GitHub Copilot Workspace, currently in limited technical preview. I've been lucky enough to gain access to…
If 2023 was the year of 'AI for the developer' at Microsoft Build, it's safe to say that 2024 continues that theme, though with more focus on practical delivery of secure, scalable solutions.
GitHub recently released their GitHub Copilot Metrics API in public beta which means it is now available for anyone who has licensed GitHub Copilot Business so they can report on usage and gain insights into the impact of Copilot adoption. I wanted to deploy this against a real organisation, so here are the steps I went through to get it working as a hosted site on an Azure Static Web App…
If you've been following me for a while you'll know I'm a huge fan of markdown, GitHub and simplifying the life of developers. In this post I am going to show you how you use the tools you already use and love along with some open source magic that has a long history to build a documentation publishing workflow. All without needing to install Word or use Windows, even if you want to publish a Word…
Appropriate data handling is an important part of any software system design. Often times we overlook the risks involved with the visibility and accessibility of data passing through our solutions and don't even think about how secure data handling applies to telemetry and logging. In this post I am going to explore how you can use Azure Logic Apps in-built input/output obfuscation capabilities to…
Regardless of where your git repositories are hosted, there is always a need to have visbility over what's going on in them. While services like GitHub provide metrics APIs, there are some limitations around those metrics APIs, particularly for busy or large repositories. In this post I'm going to look at how you can use Azure Data Explorer to analyse the commit history for a git repository.
When you provide an open input prompt it's only a matter of time before someone with type or create something inappropriate. In this post we'll look at how you can use features in Azure OpenAI Service to minimise inappropriate use of your chatbots.
As always, Ignite covers a lot of non-developer content, so there's not a huge amount of content to dig into, but I think I've found the developer gold in amongst the lot.
Publication of APIs, particularly for consumer applications, requires some next-level attention to protecting your service. In this post I am going to look at you can use Azure API Management to help protect new or existing RESTful APIs that receive and process JSON objects.
They say there's no place like home, so in this post I'm going to take a look at Microsoft's new home for developers on Windows - Dev Home!
In this post I introduce the ideas of design-time validation and unit testing for Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) developed using Bicep. Perfect if you're new to IaC and from an Ops background!
I've really been enjoying editing using just markdown, but I had one outstanding item I was missing - how to easily preview the blog as I go without needing to push to a preview on Vercel?
In this post I will cover some of the issues you might come across when deploying and configuring a private App Service Environment (ASE) and how to resolve them.
Trying to assign a Service Principal to an RBAC role in Azure and receiveing the error 'Principals of type Application cannot validly be used in role assignments.'? Read on to find out how to fix it!
I'm back with my list of the best developer sessions from Microsoft's annual developer conference - Build. Check out how you can attend remotely and cram a bunch of learning into two half days!
Everyone is looking for creative ways to use OpenAI's GPT models to boost their productivity. In this post I take a look at how you can use the Davinci GPT3 model to generate test data for your Salesforce development environment.
Let's discuss how you can go about the introduction of generative AI services such as Copilot into your software development process.
I've been blogging for over ten years, and have mostly been happy using Wordpress.com. Along the way I've had plenty of people suggesting I host my blog in other ways. In this post, I explore why and how I've finally rebuilt my blog!
On Wednesday, March 8, I spoke at the Sydney Serverless Meetup on how you can quickly build an Azure Function Extension and in what situations you should consider doing so. Here I run through the demo and the code!
I recently wrote a post on sending Azure retirement announcements via email using the Azure Communication Services Email capabilities. As this feature is in preview there are some SDK gaps, including for Azure Functions. In this post I look at how you can build an extension to fill a gap like this one!
Off the back of my recent post on building an Azure Logic Apps solution for cross-posting on social media I wanted to export what I'd quickly built and make an easily deployable asset in Azure using Bicep. See how you can that in this post.
If you're reading this, then I have successfully implemented my plan to build a content cross-posting service using Azure Logic Apps!
I was recently at an event where I had a discussion with someone who mentioned they'd missed the news about the retirement of a feature in Azure that they were making use of in a solution.
For the first time in a couple of years, there is an in-person event for Ignite, though for our list here I'm only listing sessions you can attend from the comfort of your home. If you're headed to the in-person event... lucky you!
You may be sitting there are wondering why are we doing an Azure Logic App to Power Automate Flow migration? In most cases you'd likely be heading the other direction, but I can give you a few pointers why this move makes sense.
In this final part of this series of posts covering how to build your own air quality alerting system I will build out the alerting subsystem.
From Monday 15 August 2022 anyone can now try out Microsoft Dev Box through it entering public preview. It's a service that offers a lot of potential, but during preview there are a few moving pieces you need in place to try it out and maximise your benefit.
In this final part of this series of posts covering how to build your own air quality alerting system I will build out the alerting subsystem.
So we are back with another annual developer-focused Build for 2022. While it feels like the last Build was just last week, it wasn't, and there has been a lot of change in the past year!
Recently my solution for Meetup integration ceased working as Meetup decided to shift their API from REST to GraphQL without providing any advance notice. Find out how to update a REST call to a GraphQL call in this blog.
Like any cloud platform, Microsoft Azure is always shipping new features and services regularly. In this post I've pulled out a few highlights from the last few months that I think are worth looking at if you're a developer building serverless solutions.
Microsoft continues to design and ship new form factors for its Surface range of devices. As part of the start of availability of the Surface Laptop Studio in Australia I was asked to try out one and provide feedback...
Anyone who was living in Australia during the 2019/2020 summer can't help but remember the massive bushfires we had, and the impact they had on air quality.
I am currently working on an IoT gateway project and I thought I would use the new minimal APIs in .NET 6 to build the API for an IoT gateway.
I am currently working on an IoT gateway project and I thought I would use the new minimal APIs in .NET 6 to build the API for an IoT gateway.
I thought I would find the most intricate AWS example serverless app and use it as the basis for the demo migration to Azure to go along with this blog.
Here we are again - it's almost time for the annual Microsoft Ignite conference. This edition is virtual again, so it's a great chance to hear the latest news while being able to sit at home on your sofa!
I set out to build a simple automated XBox Series X stock checker that will push an alert to me when stock shows up so that I can action it immediately regardless of where I am.
Voice assistants have become all the rage, and they provide a great way to access and consume information. A fairly common scenario, and one that most assistants ship with, is reading the latest news headlines.
Recently I reflected on the amount of time it takes for me to prepare slides for a monthly meetup, and decided this probably wasn't a great use of my time which makes it the perfect candidate to automate!
any developers are interested in learning how to build and run software on cloud platforms, but are wary of the potential for hidden costs and bill shock.
It seems like only yesterday we were talking about session for Microsoft Ignite back in March... and here we are looking forward to what's coming up at Microsoft Build which is online...
In this post I am going to take the next step - take our containerised ASP.NET web application and deploy it to Kubernetes whilst making sure the build and deployment process is centralised and repeatable.
We previously looked at the basics of what is involved in bringing .NET Framework applications to Windows Containers. In this second post we are going to go a little deeper and look at migrating an application.
Well... it's that time again! Microsoft Ignite is back for its early 2021 edition, kicking off March 2nd. I sat down and had a quick scrub through the sessions to find...