There are always situations where I want to automate small tasks. I like using Python for these kind of things, you can quickly get something working without much hassle. I needed to perform some database changes in a Microsoft SQL Server database and wanted to connect to it using Python. On Windows this is usually pretty straight forward. But I use macOS as my main operating system and I had some hurdles along the way so here is a quick how to.

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Lately I've been working on a project using Cosmos DB on Azure. I really like the simplicity of a document DB. However there were some things I learned while on the job which I wished somebody told me before starting with it.

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While working on an Android application I wanted to test permission requests. This application needed the location permission, typically this is code that is written once and when it is marked as done never looked at again. I wanted to create some UI tests to ensure that everything works and will still work in the future as expected.

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Disclaimer: This post is for fun, learning and experimenting. Use these tools wisely, in no way am I encouraging malicious use of them.

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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 frustrating 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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