Dew Drop – March 31, 2025 (#4393)

Top Links

• AI Toolkit for VS Code March Update (junjieli)
• Announcing Babylon.js 8.0 (Jason Carter & Thomas Lucchini)
• 🧠✨ Testing GPT-4o’s Image Generation – From C# with ❤️ and Microsoft.Extensions.AI (Bruno Capuano)
• AI on Windows: Chatting with Phi Silica (Nick Randolph)
• Introducing the New .NET MAUI Toolbar Control (Jeyasri Murugan)
• TechBash 2025 Call for Speakers Closing Monday (Jason Gaylord) – Today!
• Making Software Like LEGO: How Aspire Brings the Pieces Together (David Fowler)

Web & Cloud Development

• Could JavaScript have synchronous await? (Axel Rauschmayer)
• Project IDX (Google)
• Generating the launch.json and tasks.json files for VS Code (Bryan Hogan)
• Designing a Maintainable PDF Generation Web API in ASP.NET Core (Linux) C# with Clean Architecture and TX Text Control and Configuring the TX Text Control Document Editor Backend Web Server, including Port and Logging (Bjoern Meyer)
• htmx + ASP.NET Razor Pages: Your First Dance with Interactivity and Interactive Forms Made Easy: htmx Meets ASP.NET Razor Pages and Mastering htmx Attributes: Your Toolkit for Razor Pages Awesomeness and Swapping and Targeting Like a Pro: htmx Magic for Razor Pages (Chris Woodruff)
• Docker Desktop 4.39 Brings Docker Smart AI Agent, CLI in GA, and Enhanced Multi-Platform Support (Diogo Carleto)
• Azure SDK Release (March 2025) (Hector Norzagaray)
• Adaptive Video Streaming With Dash.js In React (Teng Wei Herr)
• WordPress Image Sizes: Recommended Dimensions & Resolutions (Jen Swisher)
• Critter Stack Work in Progress (Jeremy D. Miller)
• Mastering Advanced JavaScript Set Operations (Peter Mbanugo)
• Coding Azure 8: Securing a Web Service in an Azure App Service (Peter Vogel)
• Understanding Azure Functions for Microservice Architecture (Temidayo Omoniyi)
• Node v18.20.8 (LTS) (Richard Lau)
• Enhancing observability with the power of Azure Event Grid (Frank Hessen)
• Ember 6.3 Released (Jared Galanis & Katie Gengler)
• Meet Declarative Web Push (Brady Eidson)
• Item Flow – Part 1: A new unified concept for layout (Jen Simmons, Saron Yitbarek, Elika Eternad & Brandon Stewart)
• Endor: WebAssembly-Based Server in the Browser (B. Cameron Gain)
• Building Microservices Using .NET Aspire (Bruce De Jager)
• .NET Aspire – Microsoft’s Attempt at Infrastructure as Code (Darren Horrocks)
• How .NET Aspire Simplifies Service Discovery (Milan Jovanović)

WinUI, .NET MAUI & XAML

• Introducing the New OTP Input Control in .NET MAUI Toolkit (Naveenkumar Sanjeevirayan)
• WPF in .NET 9.0: The Accent Color (Thomas Claudius Huber)
• Stock Market Trends Analysis Using .NET MAUI Toolkit Candle Chart (Vallarasu Ravichandran)
• ENAMEL – An RFC for possible future XAML-based development (Matt Lacey)

Visual Studio & .NET

• Visual Studio 2022 Version 17.13.5 Release Notes (Microsoft Learn)
• C# Language Mind map v14 (Steven Giesel)
• Visual Basic: The Language That Brought Programming to the Masses (Chris Pietschmann)
• Working with dotnet 10 Without Mucking Up Your Machine (Joseph Guadagno)
• What’s New in Document Processing Libraries: 2025 Volume 1 (Gunasekaran Thirumoorthy)
• TX Text Control 33.0 Is Ready for .NET 10 Preview 2 (Bjoern Meyer)
• New: Local development with JetBrains IDEs in OpenShift Dev Spaces (Artem Zatsarynnyi)
• Records and Collections (Jon Skeet)
• On launching a dialog when a specific combo box item is selected and Fixing exception safety in our task_sequencer (Raymond Chen)
• Retrieving Services from Dependency Injection in .NET (Ricardo Peres)
• Finalizers are tricker than you might think. Part 2 (Sergey Teplyakov)
• Microsoft .NET Code Analysis: Boosting Performance with [ConstantExpected] Attribute for Methods and Boost Your .NET Projects: Simplify File Operations with Spargine’s FileProcessor (David McCarter)

AI

• Dockerizing your .NET C# MCP Server for AI Clients like Claude Desktop (Laurent Kempé)
• Generate unit tests with GitHub Copilot (Yegor Sychev)
• The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con (Baldur Bjarnason)
• 7 leadership lessons for navigating the AI turbulence (Vala Afshar)
• Monkey – Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server (James Montemagno)
• Moving from intent-based bots to proactive AI agents (OpenAI Team)
• The Future of AI Belongs to Experienced Operators with Good Taste (Aaron Stannard)
• MCP Resources (Peli de Halleux)
• MarkItDown with Ollama–Process images inside documents (Bart Wullems)
• Copilot Studio agent cost calculator – a tool to help forecast costs (Chris O’Brien)
• Agentic AI: The Missing Piece in Platform Engineering (Emilio Salvador)
• AI is shifting focus from syntax to critical thinking (Katja Skafar)
• Porting Code with LLMs (Mark Heath)
• AI and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Mike Loukides)
• Building a Model Context Protocol Server with Semantic Kernel (Sergey Menshykh)
• Does AI really make you more productive? (Salma Alam-Naylor)

Design, Methodology & Testing

• Mutation testing | Microsoft Learn (Yegor Sychev)
• Build or Adopt: Stop Building Your Own Plumbing (Shawn Wildermuth)
• How engineers can use one-on-ones with their manager to accelerate career growth (Dalia Abuadas)
• What’s the Future of Platform Engineering? (Heather Joslyn)
• 5 GitHub Actions every maintainer needs to know (Klint Finley)
• The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership Roles (Kunal Chowdhury)
• Announcing the Next-Generation of Pulumi Components: Enabling Infrastructure Abstractions (Meagan Cojocar)
• Experience CS: a new way to teach computer science (Philip Colligan)

Mobile, IoT & Game Development

• Poetry on the line: a vintage phone brought to life with Raspberry Pi (David Crookes)
• Introducing swiftly 1.0 (Swift Team)
• Media3 1.6.0 — what’s new? (Andrew Lewis)
• Empowering Game Developers with Faster Builds and Better Tools (Doug Gapinski)
• CI-Ready macOS Signing: Combining Apple Distribution & Installer Certificates for GitHub Actions (Marco Siccardi)

Screencasts & Videos

• The Download: Copilot Edits in JetBrains, GIMP 3.0, and humanoid assistants (GitHub Team)
• LTS for .NET MAUI is a Lie! (Gerald Versluis)
• IoT Coffee Talk: Episode 254 – Get Down with the Ugly! (The Fugly Ugly Episode) (IoT Coffee Talk Crew)
• Prompting with Images Using GitHub Copilot Vision | GitHub Copilot for Visual Studio (Jessie Houghton)
• Build your first Azure Function with .NET Aspire support | On .NET and Visual Studio Code + Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers Beginner’s Guide | What, Why, How (James Montemagno)
• From Text to World Knowledge: How Large Language Models Comprehend the World (Frank LaVigne)
• Windows Dev Chat – Developer Stories: WinUI Web Browser (Dmitry Borodiy & Gleb Khmyznikov)
• NSScreencast #590 – Audio Fundamentals (Ben Scheirman)
• Random.Code() – Writing a Suppressor in Rocks, Part 3 … And Removing Regions, Part 1 and Random.Code() – Removing Regions, Part 2 (Jason Bock)
• Perf Dashboard in Fabric SQL DB | Data Exposed (Anna Hoffman & Subhojit Basak)
• How to pin Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat for users (Microsoft Mechanics)

Podcasts

• Listen to our podcast episode all about Gemini 2.5 | The Keyword (Google)
• freeCodeCamp Podcast #166 – From broke musician to working dev. How college drop-out Ryan Furrer taught himself to code (Quincy Larson)
• The Hanselminutes Podcast – Forking around (with the Linux Desktop) and Finding Out with Justin Garrison (Scott Hanselman)
• Merge Conflict #456 – Hello Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers (James Montemagno & Frank Kreuger)
• GeekWire Podcast: Inside Amazon’s attempt to reinvent Alexa for the new era of AI (Todd Bishop)
• Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast – Measuring Agile Team Success Through Stable Delivery Flow | Marina Lazovic and Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast – The Great Product Owner: Leadership Skills Make the Difference | Marina Lazovic and Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast – AI and Cybersecurity – An Introduction to The Hidden Threats in Our Connected World | Dr. Eric Cole (Vasco Duarte)
• The Stack Overflow Podcast – “Are AI agents ready for the enterprise?” (Eira May)
• UX Podcast Episode #335 – Service literacy with Lou Downe (James Royal-Lawson & Per Axbom)
• AI Developer Training in .NET with Bruno Capuano – Azure & DevOps Podcast Episode #343 (Jeffrey Palermo)
• AGL 410: Toby Mills (John Rouda)
• Lenny’s Podcast – How to win in the AI era: Ship a feature every week, embrace technical debt, ruthlessly cut scope, and create magic your competitors can’t copy | Gaurav Misra (CEO and co-founder of Captions) and Lenny’s Podcast – A better way to plan, build, and ship products | Ryan Singer (creator of “Shape Up,” early employee at 37signals) (Lenny Rachitsky)
• UI Breakfast Episode #292 – Using Tokens in Design Systems with Jan Six (Jane Portman)
• Boagworld Podcast – Redefine Your Role (Paul Boag)
• Software Defined Talk Episode #512 – Let’s Not Ruin This (Brandon Whichard & Matt Ray)
• Changelog & Friends Podcast #86 – Of agents & agency (Amal Hussein & Jerod Santo)
• Directions on Microsoft Podcast – Understanding Microsoft’s AI Strategy (Mary Jo Foley)

Community & Events

• Big Thinkers: Scott Guthrie – From Innovator of ASP.NET to Azure’s Global Rise (Chris Pietschmann)
• Dapr Meteors Program (Dapr Team)
• Maintaining ownership continuity of your personal account’s repositories (GitHub Docs)
• Get 20% off 150+ video lessons covering Astro’s features (Astro Team)
• A glimpse into the history of Windows design and An industrial designer’s 30 year journey with Microsoft (Jay Tan)
• How Rust Finally Got a Specification – Thanks to a Consultancy’s Open-Source Donation and As Microsoft Turns 50, Four Employees Remember Its Early Days (EditorDavid)
• EVENT: Microsoft AI Skills Fest, April 8 – May 28, 2025 (Kurt Shintaku)
• Reflections on writing a book (Patrick Dubroy)
• A Survey for JetBrains IDE Plugin Developers (Patrick Scheibe)
• Beyond Bluesky: These are the apps building social experiences on the AT Protocol (Sarah Perez)
• MVP Summit 2025 Recap (Steve Bilogan)
• Seattle is poised for massive AI innovation impact — but could use more entrepreneurial vibes (Taylor Soper)
• Standing up for Microsoft: Recognizing the company’s employees, back to one of its first (Todd Bishop)
• Satya Nadella: DeepSeek is the new bar for Microsoft’s AI success (Tom Warren)
• Dart in Google Summer of Code 2025 (Jonas Finnemann Jensen)

Database

• SQL Server Express Edition Installation and Configuration (Daniel Calbimonte)
• Things I Wish Inline Table Valued Functions Helped With In SQL Server and Strange Query Plans With Inequality Predicates In SQL Server (Erik Darling)
• SQL Server Source Control on a $0 Budget (Kevin3NF)
• Migration Dashboard for SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc (ajith-k)
• Are You Azure SQL Database Curious? (Karen Lopez)
• Save on Azure SQL with Azure Hybrid Benefit (Thomas Maurer)

SharePoint, M365 & MS Teams

• Microsoft 365 Copilot’s ‘First-of-Their-Kind Reasoning Agents’ — Here’s What They Do (Aminu Abdullahi)
• Improve your forms with Copilot suggestions and Share forms for collaboration using your Microsoft account and Boost engagement with Copilot in Forms and How to update to the new solution for syncing forms responses to Excel (junyuB)
• Using Excel Copilot To Import Data With Power Query (Chris Webb)
• Microsoft 365 Certification control spotlight: Data retention, back-up, and disposal (Krishna Mawani)
• Microsoft is giving its Office apps a speed boost (Tom Warren)
• Introducing Researcher and Analyst in Microsoft 365 Copilot (Jared Spataro)

PowerShell & Terminal

• Add and Customize Oh My Zsh in a Linux Development Container (Joseph Guadagno)
• Warp: Launch Log 1 (Olivia Johnston)

Miscellaneous

• Microsoft publishes Windows roadmap as it promises transparency around feature availability (Zac Bowden)
• UniGetUI (formerly WingetUI) – The Graphical Interface for your package managers (UniGetUI Team)
• Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5516 (Dev Channel) and Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.3653 (Beta Channel) (Amanda Langowski & Brandon LeBlanc)
• Introducing the Windows roadmap (AriaUpdated)
• Giant, Fungus-Like Organism May Be Completely Unknown Branch of Life (BeauHD)
• Light Phone III review: everything in moderation (David Pierce)
• 4 accessibility tools to try in Firefox (Kim Bryant, Jamie Teh & Anna Yeddi)
• Trump’s auto tariffs are a gift to Tesla (Sean O’Kane)

More Link Collections

• F# Weekly #13 2025 – WebSharper 8.0 (Sergey Tihon)
• Azure Weekly #509 – 30th March 2025 (The Editor)
• Daily Reading List – March 27, 2025 (#521) and Daily Reading List – March 28, 2025 (#522) (Richard Seroter)

The Geek Shelf

 Parallel Programming and Concurrency with C# 10 and .NET 6: A modern approach to building faster, more responsive, and asynchronous .NET applications using C# (Alvin Ashcraft)