Unfortunately a lot of companies are still stuck with Windows servers. Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft, right. As a developer this can be furstrating because choosing a server technology is usually limited to ASP.Net. I have experimented with hosting Node.js applications on a Windows server by using iisnode. But it is a pain to get up and running, setting the correct permissions is a time consuming chore. Microsoft has taken control of the development of the project but I get the feeling it's not very active any more. There are several Stackoverflow questions where people just give up configuring it.

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Aliases are a handy way to quickly execute certain commands in the terminal on Mac and in the command prompt on Windows. I recently read this post about git aliases which nicely demonstrates what is possible, it focuses on git commands but it can be done for any type of command.

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This excellent tip comes from my coworker Konstantin. If you have a Visual Studio solution that has a lot of projects and is slow you can speed up Visual Studio by disabling automatic file restore. To disable automatic file restore open Tools > Options in Visual Studio, select Projects and Solutions > General and deselect Reopen documents on solution load.

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I started reading the Code Complete book on vacation in Italy in book2014 not realizing it would take me more than 3 years to finish it. At the end of 2017 I finally read the last page. Do I recommend it? Yes absolutely. Although it can be dry, even boring, sometimes it has a lot of value for every kind of programmer. And all facts are supported by research and other books which are cited all through the book. This post is a reference for myself of the notes I took while reading the book.

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In 2017 I started working on an Android app, at some point a custom graph was needed that could be changed by the user. Drawing the different parts on the screens gives the most flexibility. The Canvas is used for drawing, the custom component where the drawing will happen is a class which inherits from View.

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After Techorama the next conference I attended was Joy of Coding, something completely different and a more alternative conference.

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The last Microsoft focused conference I attended was the Techdays in 2008, almost 10 years ago. I heard good things about its successor, Techorama, so I decided to attend this year's edition. These are my notes and experiences of the sessions I attended.

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I've been building iOS applications for 2 years now. Although I'm not a big fan of the development environment, Xcode has its quirks, I do love the iOS platform. The biggest drawback is that you can only target iOS devices. I heard a lot of things, some good, some bad about Xamarin and React Native and was intrigued by both hybrid app development platforms. I'm a little familiar with Xamarin but have no experience with React or React Native. Motivated with the learning goals I've set out for myself I decided to give React Native a test drive in one of the Aaltra company hackathons. It's a half day every week that we use to test out new technologies and learn new things.

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Last time we made a Fake build script for an ASP.Net MVC project. I wanted to bring this to the next level and set up continuous integration for the project. I've used TeamCity in the past and it was ok, it did its thing but there was a lot of configuration involved to get a project up and running and the performance was sometimes slower than I expected. So looking for alternatives the first thing I tried was Bitbucket Pipelines but it can apparently only be used for .Net Core projects. I don't think it can run Windows tasks at the moment.

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Each year I try to set some goals for myself to keep improving my skills. At the end of the year it's fun to reflect on the goals I've reached and at the same time confronting because of the goals I didn't complete. This year, although it's already April, I want to do it a little different. To be able to better evaluate what I want to learn this year I decided to write it all down so I could evaluate my progress better. And by making it public there'll be a bit more pressure to actually completing the goals I set.

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