- Dan's newsletter
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- Newsletter 017 - October
Hi everyone! 👋
If you’ve been following me even for a short period of time - you’ll know that I’m a HUGE fan of JetBrains Rider! But up until just a few days ago - you’ve needed to pay for a licence to use it, even for non-commercial use (albeit, there were open-source and student licences). But now, ANYONE can just go to their download page and download it for FREE! 🎉 (as long as it’s not for commercial use). Note that this isn’t a sponsored mention - it’s my go-to IDE of choice and has been for years, so more than happy to rave about it! ❤️ The new licence also applies to their WebStorm IDE too.
Table of Contents
📰 News items and dev picks
Here are my dev picks this month…
JetBrains Rider and Webstorm are now FREE for non-commercial use!!! - Okay, I know I already mentioned this in the intro above - but it’s still a news item! And it’s still awesome! 😆
GitHub Spark - This has just been announced by GitHub Next labs, allowing you to quickly build small apps using nothing but natural language! You can sign up for the waiting list via the above link. Here’s a TechCrunch article about it.
.NET Aspire 9 RC1 has shipped! - I’ve played around with Aspire, but haven’t yet fully embraced it in projects. Maybe with .NET 9 being just around the corner, it’s time! Looks like there are lots of awesome improvements in there too!
Swagger / Swashbuckle is no longer automatically included in .NET 9 templates - They’re now using their own OpenAPI implementation, which doesn’t include a UI. Nick Chapsas did a video on this, and also recommended a library called Scalar if you need a nice UI for your APIs.
OpenAI plans to release its next big AI model by December - This is codenamed “Orion”, and I quote… “This AI model aims for 100x more computational volume than GPT-4” !!! 🤯
Anthropic publicly releases AI tool that can take over the user’s mouse cursor
DDD South West 2025 Conference date announced - If you’re in the UK, then definitely check out this conference! It’s totally free to attend, and such a great event!
Orchard Core 2.0 has been released - Orchard Core is an open-source CMS for ASP.NET Core. It’s been around quite a long time - so hitting a major 2.0 release is quite a big milestone!
.NET Conf - Nov 12-14th - This will be the official release of .NET 9!
Microsoft is discontinuing its HoloLens headsets - Bad news for devs who invested in this!
Andrew Lock’s “Result Pattern” blog series - This new series of posts by Andrew ties quite nicely into this month’s podcast episode (see below) where I was chatting to Callum Linington about alternatives to using exceptions.
Dev Comic pick of the month
My favourite design pattern is KISS! Keep it Super Simple! You might argue that that’s not a design pattern - well, I think it should be! I see so much code that is totally over-engineered and has become a nightmare to maintain. When doing technical interviews, the number of candidates I’ve seen who have failed to get the task working because they’ve immediately jumped into spending time creating interfaces, services, repositories, etc, etc before even fully understanding the problem! I’m not saying these things are never needed - but only add them when you’re sure they’re needed - and don’t default to adding every design pattern you’ve ever read about to every problem! 🙂
Dev Tip - become an obsessive note-taker
Starting with this issue, I’m going to include a monthly dev tip. This month’s dev tip is to become an avid note-taker. Treat your note-taking system as a personal “second brain”. I use Notion very heavily for all aspects of my life that’s non-client work, and I use Obsidian for client-related work. This not only helps me remember and organise information - but it also acts as a great thinking tool. If I start working on a new user-story - the first thing I do is create an Obsidian note for it, plan it out and break it down in that note. I also have A LOT of code snippets in my notes for various different programming things - which means I don’t need to re-learn or re-type things that I’ve already done before. Also taking personal notes about the architecture and codebase and how things work, really helps me consolidate how it works in my mind. There’s something about writing something in your own words that really helps you grok it more deeply, whilst also providing a great reference for you to quickly look back to remind yourself.
Sponsorship opportunities
I’m looking for sponsors for both the podcast and this newsletter. Details of podcast sponsorship can be found here. Feel free to reply to this email to discuss further.
The Podcast 🎙
I published one episode this month and also recorded another.
In the published one, I was joined for a second time by Callum Linington, this time, ironically given the name of the podcast, to chat about Exceptions! And more importantly - better alternatives. I'm afraid the "monad" word got thrown in too! The previous episode where Callum joined me was back in episode 26, where we chatted about Event Sourcing and Event-Driven architectures.
And in the second episode, which hasn’t yet been released, I was joined by Rob West to chat about “Upgrading Your Brain’s OS”! This was a great conversation, where we discussed improving attention and focus through mindfulness and positive mental practices. This should be out in the next week or so.
Note that this will be the last episode this year. I’ll soon be starting my 3rd Dometrain course, and want some focus time for that. Usual service will resume in the new year!
To be notified when the episodes drop, click subscribe in your favourite podcast app. The links can be found on the podcast website.
Also, remember that we have a Discord community for the podcast!…
Podcast Discord community
My Dometrain Courses
Below are details of my Dometrain courses. There’s also a bundle that includes both courses which can be found here.
Docker for Developers
This course will teach you everything you need to know about Docker and containers. From what containers and images are; to how to build your own; to security and networking; docker-compose; and much more!
Kubernetes for Developers
Once you understand Docker, containers, images, etc - it’s time to move onto the next level and learn a container orchestrator - and Kubernetes has clearly won the battle here! My Kubernetes course is rammed-packed full of demos (pretty much all the way through), which are easy to follow along with downloadable YAML files and scripts. We start with the basics, then later move on to more advanced topics like services meshes and operators.
If you’ve made it this far into the newsletter - I’m hoping that means you’ve
both enjoyed it and found it useful. If you can help me out and share with your developer friends at work and on social media, that would be amazing!
Again - feel totally free to reach out to me, and let me know your thoughts on the newsletter. And see you back in your inbox next month for the next edition! 👋
