Auteur/autrice : istudormarius

Basics on meeting online

Online video conferencing  is an important tool for today’s working professionals.

Some basics:

  • spend some time to prepare the meeting and plan what you will say. Practice.
  • respect other participants and watch how long you are speaking
  • turn off your microphone when you are not talking
  • remain attentive
  • don’t forget you are on camera so remain engaged and friendly both while you are speaking and while you are listening

Some expressions for online discussions (agree/disagree, clarify, restate, take a turn, show interest)

  • Yes, i agree.
  • It looks good to me.
  • I think so, too.
  • I definitely agree.
  • I’m afraid i don’t agree.
  • I am sorry, but i don’t agree.
  • That’s interesting, but i’d prefer something different.
  • Actually, i disagree.
  • Excuse me, i didn’t hear that. Could you say it again?
  • Sorry, i missed what you just said. Could you repeat that please?
  • I’m sorry, could you explain that again?
  • Excuse me, could you tell me what that means?
  • Thanks, now i get it
  • Thank you. It’s a lot clearer to me now.
  • I understand…..
  • I see, our first step is to…
  • Excuse, can i say something here?
  • Could i interrupt you for a minute?
  • Sorry to interrupt but i would like to say something here
  • So, what do you think?
  • Can you give me your thoughts on this?
  • Do you agree?
  • What’s your opinion?
  • That’s interesting
  • Really?
  • I see.

You can find more here: Speak English Professionally: In Person, Online & On the Phone.

Microsoft bot

Microsoft bot strategy

Bots are conversational agents are they are meant to help users to complete a particular task. There are not new and they are not specific to Microsoft. The user doesn’t need to have an application or to go to a specific Web site and he can provide information directly to the bots.

 

Why Microsoft just made a big bet on bots

Satya Nadella thinks that bots are a simple concept with a profound impact. Microsoft hopes that boots become the next major computing platform even if for now the consumer interest is not overwhelming. Bots are cataloged as the website builder of the future. Some startups are already creating bots, Google tried to buy Chatfuel and Facebook is expected to open Facebook Messenger to third-party bots. Microsoft will make easier for developers to write bots  in Windows and run them on the Azure.

https://dev.botframework.com/

To get started you will need a Microsoft account.

Microsoft Bot Framework contains Bot Connector,  Bot Builder SDK and Bot Directory.

Bot Connector allows you to register, connect and publish the bots to services like text/sms, Office 365 mail, Skype, Slack and others.

Bot Builder SDK will provide anything you need to build great dialogs within your bot. For C# you can get started from docs.botframework.com/sdkreference/csharp/.

The Bot Directory is a public directory of all approved bots registered through the Bot Connector.

 

Notes #4 – Git vs SVN, git-flow

A comparison between Git and SVN. Git’s major features:

  • Git was designed to be fully distributed from the start, allowing each developer to have full local control
  • Git branches are simpler and less resource heavy than Subversion’s
  • Git branches carry their entire history
  • Branch merging is simpler and more automatic in Git.
  • Git is extremely fast. Since all operations (except for push and fetch) are local there is no network latency involved

git-flow – a successful git branching model

The main branches:

  • master – the main branch where the source code always reflects a production-ready state.
  • develop – the main branch where the source code always reflects the latest delivered development changes. The « integration branch » where any automatic nightly builds are build from.

Other branches, with a limited life time,  with a specific purpose, to aid parallel development:

  • feature  – it branches off from develop and it must merged back into develop. It exists as long as the feature is in development
  • release – it branches off from develop  and it must merged back int develop and master. Branch name convention: release-*. Use it for minor bug fixes and preparing meta-data for a release
  • hotfix – it branches off from master and must be merged back into develop and master. Branch naming convention: hotfix -*. Use it when you need to act immediately upon an undesired state of a live production version, when a critical bug in a production version must be resolved immediately.

Automate git branching workflow – use  git-flow library of git subcommands that helps automate some parts of the flow to make working with it a lot easier.

Issues with git-flow – The git-flow process is designed largely around the « release » but when you need to deploy regularly (every day), like GitHub does, a much simpler workflow is required.

 

Read and Write from the Interactive Shell

To write a value to the shell you can use the Write-Host command. It also allows you customize the console output.

$name = "Marius"
Write-Host -ForegroundColor White -BackgroundColor Black $name

To read a value from the interactive shell you can use Read-Host. This command will read a line of input from the console.

Write-Host "Please enter your age"
$age = Read-Host

Common cmdlets in Powershell

Here are some common used cmdlets in Powershell:

get-help

get-help process

– retrieves a list of commands available on a specific topic. For example, process

get-process

get-process

– returns information on processes

get-service

get-service

– returns information on the services that are installed on the computer

get-item

get-item C:\

– Gets the item at the specified location

get-content

get-content C:\file.txt

– returns the contents of the specified item

PowerShell – A really short introduction

PowerShell, seen as an evolution of the former Windows command-line shell, offers a new way the shell interprets the commands (not as plain text but allowing more interaction).  This scripting language interprets objects with methods and attributes that have have access to much of .NET Framework. For example, for retrieving the length of a string, we can call the property Length of an object of type System.String.

PowerShell also allows you to work with COM, WMI, XML and Active Directory.

A cmdlet is a lightweight command that is used in the Windows PowerShell environment

To run the simplest commands we only need the interactive shell from Windows. Type Powershell.exe. It is compatible with DOS commands and UNIX commands.

However, there are several tools that provide syntax highlighting, debugging, like PowerShell ISE or PowerGUI.

 

Notes #4 – Reading books

A simple plan to start reading more – Of course there is no simple plan. Just start reading 25 pages per day. I will start with 10. No excuses.

The art of reading, remembering and retaining more books

Start by finding out how fast do you read. My reading speed is average. You can improve your speed by following all kind of guides, choose another way of reading, like Spritz, or make more time by cutting out time from other activities. Keep in mind that not always reading faster is the right solution.

Remember what you read by trying to be impressed by the text or associating it to something you already know or use repetition by literally re-reading a passage.

Scribble, bookmark what you like, write a review.

 

.NET is now cross-platform

Microsoft is building a new version of .NET, called .NET Core, which is open-source and which will allow us to write cross-platform code (Windows, multiple distributions of Linux and OS X). The goal is to run .NET Core in as many places as possible. In fact, the code is portable and it can be run on different supported platforms: .NET Framework, Mono, Xamarin,  Windows 8, Windows Phone, Universal Windows Platform (UWP). There is a list of multiple implementations based on .NET Standards and it can be found on github.

The design and the architecture of .NET core are modular and its component are all separate entities. This way the developers can choose the libraries and the dependencies that are needed.

We can write code for .NET Core on:

  • cross-platform ASP.NET Web apps using ASP.NET Core 1.0. Until February it was called ASP.NET 5
  • cross-platform console apps
  • cross-platform libraries and frameworks
  • UWP apps (apps that target the family of Windows 10 devices)

.NET has now 2 flavors: NET Core and .NET Framework

First of all, .NET Core is not a subset of .NET Framework. It is a different stack. We will still be able to use the same languages: C#, F#, Visual Basic but we should see .NET Core and .NET Framework as two different stacks that coincide and co-evolve. .NET Core was created so that .NET could be open source and cross-platform.

A big difference between .NET Framework and .NET Core is the way how they are serviced and where they live. As we know, .NET Framework is a Windows component serviced through OS updated while .NET Core is composed of Nuget packages and it can be serviced per-application and through a package manager.

The .NET Framework will continue to be the stack to use when writing application ranging from console applications, rich client (WPF) applications to scalabe web applications.

Apprendre le français #3 – Marcel Proust

Enfant à la santé fragile, Marcel Proust aura toute sa vie des difficultés respiratoires graves causées par l’asthme. Lors de ses nombreux voyages à la campagne sa mère devient la personne la plus proche de lui et il developpe une passion pour la lecture.

Le livre qui va lui changer le cours de la vie, « Norman conquest of England », le transporte dans le passé. À ce moment-là, il decide de devenir un écrivain qui va essayer d’éclairer les lois de la nature humaine.

Persécuté par l’idée qu’il ne va pas vivre longtemps il commence à lire beaucoup. Malgré sa tendance naturelle être seul il est incroyablement sociable. Il fréquente des sallons aristocratiques où il rencontre des artistes et des écrivains. Il est fasciné par ce monde dont il s’inspire pour ses futurs personnages. Il veut écrire seulement ce qui est réel, ce qu’il a expérimenté. Sinon, l’écriture est sans vie, d’après lui.

Il profite de sa fortune qui lui permet de ne pas avoir un emploi et il publie son premier roman mais qui n’est pas très bien reçu et qui ne se vend pas bien. Il est catalogué comme un écrivain superficiel. Il decide de répondre aux critiques en écrivant un roman plus complexe mais avec le temps il abandonne  ce projet. Il se sent démoralisé.

Pressé par sa famille pour choisir un métier, persécuté par l’idée qu’il va bientôt mourir, il decide d’apprendre l’anglais et de traduire les oeuvres de Ruskin. Après quelques années de travail intense il les publie, il reçoit de bonnes critiques et il définit son style.

Après la mort de ses parents, sa santé se détériore davantage. Il commence l’écriture de sa grande ouvre, « À la recherche du temps perdu », qui aura sept tomes. Le roman est une réflexion sur le temps et sa relativité, mais aussi une analyse de la société aristocratique et bourgeoise. L’amour et la jalousie sont aussi présentés. C’est la vie de Marcel Proust dans ce roman, des histoires collectées pendant des années.

Avec chaque tome les lecteurs ont l’impression de vivre vraiment dans le monde cré par l’écrivain. C’est un effet magique, c’est l’effet qui l’avait senti et qu’il a voulu transmettre aux lecteurs.

 

Notes #3 – Career, developers, git

5 Essential Pieces of Career Advice No One Ever Told You

In my opinion the most important of all: Your boss matters more than your company. Having the right mentor is the real key. The second important advice is don’t use data to pick a job, just do what you enjoy doing and be great at it. Also, the technical skills will only get you so far. You will have to learn how to navigate the world of office politics.

What distracts developers

The survey surprised me: « unplanned worked », 24.9% of the votes and « only » 22.7% of votes, social media. Chatty coworkers, meetings, forums and reading/writing emails are other reasons.

Git Commands and Best Practices Cheat Sheet – Print this git cheat sheet!