Episode 153: 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.

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 Container Apps

• Azure Container Apps Newsletter – September 2023 by Cary Chai
• Azure Container Apps Community Standup - Scaling and troubleshooting Container Apps

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:

• Sync and async microservice messaging with Dapr and JavaScript by Marc Duiker
• Dapr Community Call - Oct 4th (#91)

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

• It happened: the new Terraform version is available Terraform 1.6 adds a test framework for enhanced code validation - this is now under the BSL license
• And (coincidence or correlation) the first alpha version of OpenTofu is out too: OpenTofu Releases
• Bootstrap your GitOps-enabled AKS cluster with Terraform: A code sample using the Flux v2 K8s Extension by Paul Yu
• Work with environment variables in Azure Bicep by John Lokerse

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:

• A developer’s guide to open source LLMs and generative AI by Gwen Davis
• How to communicate like a GitHub engineer: our principles, practices, and tools by Ben Balter and Allison Matlack
• 3 strategies to expand your threat model and secure your supply chain by Mike Hanley
• Repository Rules – insight enhancements
• Automate Container Image Patching with Copacetic and GitHub Actions by Josh Duffney

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?

• Another month, another release: Azure Developer CLI (azd) – October 2023 Release
• Speedrun your deployments from VS Code

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:

• Kedify ♡ KEDA: Why We Started?
• WebAssembly's Game-Changer: The Component Model.
• Unlocking global government innovation with Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty – public preview available today by Corey Sanders

🐱‍👤 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 #163 - The one with the UI5 Spreadsheet Importer (Marian Zeis)
• Keep your AI service integration off the grid with SAP Private Link for Azure by Martin Pankraz and Harutyun Ter-Minasyan

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.

Further news from the SAP world

Let's check out what else happened in the SAP universe that you should check out:

• The Devtoberfest is in full swing, so check out the videos in the SAP Developers YT channel - unfortunately no dedicated playlist available

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:

• Enhancing an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) with Crossplane on EKS at SIXT by Christina Andonov, Boyan Dimitrov and Carlos Santana
• All sessions available: Azure Back to School 2023
• Green Software Foundation Responsible AI Panel: Tackling AI’s Environmental Challenge - a bit of mixed feelings around some panelists, but unteresting to watch.

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:

• Willkommen im Coding Circle // deutsch
• Let's Code: Von der Idee bis in die Cloud // 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:

• Golo ist ein Echsenmensch?! … (wie Du damit umgehst, was andere von Dir denken) // deutsch .. spoiler, he is not :-)

Events

If you want to learn where to find Kubernetes-focused events and conferneces near you this episode of Cloud Native Weekly is something for you

• Cloud Native Weekly - Ep 16 - Conferences, Conferences, Conferences!

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