Episode 160: 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 Functions and Static Web Apps (SWA)

• Azure Functions Community Standup - Dapr extension for Azure Functions deep dive & Ignite updates

Azure Container Apps

• Public preview: Vector database add-ons for Azure 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:

• Software-Architektur.tv - Dapr: Eine Umgebung für Microservices by Eberhard Wolff

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

• Azure Network Architecture - Terraform Examples
• Test permutations with Terraform and GitHub Actions by Mattias Fjellström
• Infrastructure as Code with Pulumi and GitHub Actions by Till Spindler

GitHub

GitHub comes with a blast of new features and enhancements every week. Here are my top 3 news from GitHub that you should check out:

• For Good First Issue: Introducing a new way to contribute by Sidney Espinosa
• Highlights from Git 2.43 by Taylor Blau
• GitHub Support Portal will soon require login

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.

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:

• Azure Web PubSub for Socket.IO is now generally available by Kevin Guo
• Azure OpenAI Design Patterns

Well, OpenAI was a topic this week:

• How it started OpenAI announces leadership transition
• How it ended ... at least until now A statement from Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella

🐱‍👤 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 #169 - The one with Enterprise controls in AI SDK (Gopal Nair)
• Hey ABAP Cloud please let me save my data export to Azure Storage please🥺🙏- part 4 by Martin Pankraz

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:

• Serverless AI with Rust, Spin and Fermyon Cloud by Thorsten Hans

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:

• Deep Learning illustriert (von Jon Krohn, Grant Beyleveld und Aglaé Bassens) // deutsch
• OpenAI + Microsoft: Alles inszeniert und manipuliert? // 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:

• Motivation vs Disziplin … (was Du brauchst, um Deine Ziele zu erreichen) // deutsch

Events

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

• Recordings are available: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2023

And some recordings from Ignite:

• Inside Microsoft AI innovations with Mark Russinovich | WAKEY05
• Radius a new open-source application platform for the cloud | BRK402
• End-to-End AI App Development: Prompt Engineering to LLMOps | BRK203

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