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Articles by John Papa
Real Estate and Fracking
Hi All, After spending time out in Colorado and the surrounding areas, my wife and I are set on moving, specifically the Erie area. After looking at a lot of properties, we found one we really like and are considering making an offer. The only thing that is giving us some pause are some fracking sites located close to the home and development. One site is about .25 miles away, and another about a mile away.
How the Supply Chain Crisis Is Heightening Risk Exposures in Commercial Lines
The supply chain crisis has seared itself into popular imagination through empty shelves where toilet paper once stood and a desperate shortage of baby formula. But the ripple effects that emanate from globally disrupted supply chains wash over far more than consumer packaged goods. For commercial insurers, the supply chain crisis is a systemic event that can amplify risk exposures across commercial property, commercial auto and general liability, among other lines of business.
VS Code Function Keys in the MacBook Touchbar
I love writing code in VS Code on my MacBook Pro. VS Code has a ton of shortcuts that let me keep my fingers on the keyboard and fly around, coding. Recently I purchased the new MacBook Pro with the touchbar, which has raised a new hurdle ... how do I use the function keys? These are helpful for refactoring shortcuts in VS Code. I could map these features to other keys, but there is an easy way to show the FN keys to the touchbar when in VS Code on a Mac. Open System Preferences and find the Keyboard.
VS Code Extension with Azure Function Intellisense
Lately, I've been hooked on Azure Functions, which are incredibly easy to get started to create some of your own APIs. One thing I love about editors is their ability to look up language syntax and JSON schemas to provide features like intellisense. I recently posted about how to add JSON schemas to a VS Code settings.json file to add intellisense for Azure Functions. After a short chat with my colleagues, I decided to create an extension that makes it even easier.
Refactor Your Node.js and Express APIs to Serverless APIs with Azure Functions
Wondering how you could take advantage of Serverless architecture? Now you can refactor a Node.js Express app to Azure Functions in this hands-on tutorial Overview Your company is launching a vacation planning website that helps customers add, edit, view, and remove plans from their wish list. Your API, which powers these features, runs on Node.js and Express is critical to the success of the application. Your API server is critical to the success of the application.
Try gh, GitHub's new CLI
Quiz: What do you use every day, that is essential to your development workflow, and has a vast and complex UI and API? Answer: GitHub, of course! You likely interact with the git commands in terminal for some operations and then go to the https://github.com web site when you need to perform other operations.
Free Vue Course: Getting Started
Course Overview (Music) Hi everyone! My name is John Papa. Welcome to my course, Vue: Getting Started. This beginner-level course takes you on a journey through the fundamental features of Vue. It guides you down the right path, making your own journey with Vue more productive. Along the way, we're going to build a sample application so you can code along while you learn, and after you watch this course, you can use this sample as a reference for your own development.
Webinar: Angular patterns & practices with John Papa
Tuesday, July 16 at 1:00 p.m. ET While there’s a lot of information available about the core concepts of Angular, very little focuses on architectural concepts, best practices, and how to solve some of the more challenging tasks — especially those that surface while you’re building applications from scratch or working toward a crucial deadline.
Five Things About GitHub
Phil Haack joins John Papa on this week's FIVE THINGS to talk about (more than) five things about GitHub. Check out these links from the show: Ignore white space in code review blog postKeep your proj
Five Things About Developing on a Mac
Christina Warren joins John Papa to talk Five Things about developing on a Mac. They talk about the kind of hardware you need, software for web and Swift developers, CI/CD workloads on Azure and macOS
#FiveThings Renewed for Season 2
#FiveThings has been renewed for Season 2!We have some amazing guests for this upcoming season, but in the meantime we're going to take a short break.We'll be back on Wednesdays, starting on OCTOBER 3rd.Thank you so much for watching the show--it wouldn't be possible without you. For real.
Episode 24: Five Things About NLP
What if talking to computers was part of our everyday lives? Well that's slowly becoming true with devices like Siri, Cortana, Amazon Alexa and Google Home. If you've ever been interested in getting started with building applications that are able to understand human language then this is the episode for you. John and Brian talk about what it takes to get started with Natural Language Processing (NLP). What is it? What can I do with it?
Episode 22: Five Things About React Components
Brandy Morgan joins John Papa in another episode to learn Five Things about react components. Learn more at https://aka.ms/5things-azureTo watch more episodes go to https://aka.ms/FiveThingsPlaylist C
Episode 20: Five Things About Service Workers
This week on Five Things – SERVICE WORKERS. What are they? What do they do and how do you use them? John sits down with Craig Shoemaker who knows a thing or two about Service Workers. Or at least he pretends to and fakes it really well. You decide.
Episode 18: Five Things About Bots
Did you know that half of the internet is comprised of bots?! It's true--bots are everywhere and they are changing the way we interface with computers. In this episode of Five Things, John sits down w
Episode 16: Five Things About State in React
React expert Brandy Morgan explains how React handles local state, state flow, and props. Brandy and John cover how components can use state, to take advantage of the life cycle events, and the overall flow of state in apps. Should you throw your components? Re-use them? What would John look like with a mullet? Learn these and more in this episode of Five Things!Learn more at https://aka.ms/5things-azureTo watch more episodes go to https://aka.ms/FiveThingsPlaylist
Sharing Slides Online
We often share slides online. There are several tools that handle this, but none seem to retain all of the intended experience. Why so hard?! For example, many of them do not retain animations. Even if they do retain some animations, some are almost always lost. This is likely because the tools we create them with don't handle them in a consistent manner. I use a lot of subtle transitions, animations, and animated gifs in my presentations - and often these are part of the presentation's experience.
Episode 14: Five Things About IndexedDB
Join John Papa and Craig Shoemaker on this episode of 5 Things for details on the fun and funkiness of IndexedDB (and touch of 80's pop music trivia). There a few options when it comes to saving data on the client. One choice stands out above the rest in its ability to store large amounts of data and handle client-side queries.
Play by Play: Build a Serverless Node Web API
Play by Play is a series in which top technologists work through a problem in real time, unrehearsed, and unscripted. In this course, Play by Play: Build a Serverless Node Web API, John Papa and Simona Cotin explore some of their favorite features and use cases for Serverless, along with VSCode you can use to develop and debug your serverless applications. Learn the basics of Serverless, how to create a functioning App inside VSCode, and options for deployment.
Episode 10: Five Things--Why TypeScript is for You
Wondering why you should try TypeScript? When is it useful? What are the fundamental benefits? What tools do we get with TypeScript? What's the catch? There has to be a catch, right!? Join Technical F
Episode 7: Five Things About TypeScript
Learn more at https://aka.ms/5things-azureTo watch more episodes go to https://aka.ms/FiveThingsPlaylistLearn five of the coolest features of TypeScript from Technical Fellow, Anders Hejlsberg. How can TypeScript help editors better check and improve our JavaScript? How does TypeScript use Control Flow Analysis? How do we avoid the pyramid of doom with asynchronous callback hell? Learn these and why Anders is having so much fun creating compilers in this episode of Five Things!
Episode 5: Five Things About Docker
Docker the big technology all Web and cloud developer should be exploring. What is it about whales that they deploy containers so well? Why does Dan always match his shirt to the Docker-whale blue? Le
Episode 4: Five Things About RxJS with Angular
Learn how Angular uses RxJS, what are Reactive Forms, and how RxJS helps with cloud development with Ward Bell and John Papa. Is it good for coordinating events? Is RxJS good when combined with serverless computing? Why Ward thinks if you send your requests out and they love you, they will come back as a response? Where can you learn more about RxJS, Angular and Azure? Why did Ward leave his night club crooning job? Learn these and more in this episode of Five Things!
Episode 2: Five Things About RxJS
Learn what RxJS is, what observables are, and how your apps can benefit from them from Ward Bell and John Papa. Is it good for responding to a stream of events? Why does Ward run into things so often? What can you do with RxJS that is a reason to use it over promises? How it is great for watching keystrokes? Why does Ward want to hug it out with John? Learn these and more in this episode of Five Things!
Cloud Developer Advocates at Microsoft Imagine Cup 2017
During this year's Imagine Cup World Finals at Microsoft Headquarters, Cloud Developer Advocates had the opportunity to judge some of the Imagine Cup finalists' projects. For the first time this year,
Former alderman advocates for Lauretti | Shelton Herald
During the last quarter century and even before that time the men and women who were elected to be Connecticut Governors have dug the state into debt beyond belief. We are losing the wealthiest and youngest people of our state because of our extreme taxes and no prospects of quality jobs in the state. During this same time, under the leadership of Mark A. Lauretti, the city of Shelton has overcome the problems which have plagued the state of Connecticut and many other states.
Azure Functions in Two Minutes
I love building web apps with JavaScript and I almost always need an API to serve my data or connect to a behind-the-scenes service. Azure Functions makes this wicked easy. In fact, it takes a just a few minutes. Brian Clark and I share my screen in the video below
3 Things You Need to Learn About CSS Selectors
If you haven't checked out CSS, understanding the most often used core selectors is a good place to start. I want to learn the CSS language, so how do I get started? I hear this question from developers with varying experience. I admit, jQuery makes it awfully easy to locate elements in code, manipulate their styles and toggle CSS classes. But much of the styling can be done directly in CSS, which leads to better separation of concerns. In CSS, style sheets depend on a cascading order of rules.
Code Reuse with External Templates and Knockout.js
External templates allow you to reduce the code in your main HTML page, and reuse it in multiple places. Model-View-ViewModel, data binding and separation of concerns are just some of the reasons that Knockout.js, which I introduced in a recent column ("2 Great JavaScript Data-Binding Libraries," February 2012), has become a popular data-binding library in the Web community.
Working with the HTML5 Canvas: A 5-Minute Tutorial
Get started with this quick but informative guide (and sample code) from John Papa. Sometimes you want to render a visual on the fly, or even animate it. Perhaps the visual is a complex path where the set of x,y coordinates dictate what to render. Or perhaps the visual is a graph whose coordinates are defined by data. For these scenarios and much more, the HTML5 canvas is ideal.
Fundamental MVVM
Understanding Model-View-ViewModel is the first step in using it. Want to make Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) simple? I know I do. First, I want to explain why I think MVVM appears complicated to many folks, when I think it's quite the opposite. In fact, I think MVVM can prove more valuable that not using MVVM in almost any situation. But for that to happen, first we have to understand what MVVM is and is not. While very popular, the MVVM pattern is often misunderstood.
Developer Impacts 2012
2012 is barely underway, yet some of the technology that may shape this year is already starting to emerge. Which ones will have the largest impact? I recently took a look at 2011 and how it may impact developers. Now I shift my perspective to the coming year and see what it may hold. 2012 is barely underway, yet some of the technology that may shape this year is already starting to emerge.
Silverlight Skills Carry Over to Windows 8 'Metro Style' Apps
Windows 8 is an early preview, but has enough of its shape to show XAML developers that their skills are applicable. Good news, XAML developers: In "Windows 8," your skills are still valuable. The past year included some rough spots for many XAML developers and designers who are trying to make sense of their future. Where is Silverlight heading? What's the road like for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)?
Effective JavaScript Tips
JavaScript can be unwieldy. But using techniques like separation and Revealing Module Pattern can get it under control. Welcome to the first article of my new column, Papa's Perspective -- and thanks for reading it! As this is the first of the series (and because my editor ordered me to introduce myself), I'll spend a quick moment sharing a little about me and my vision for this column.
2 Great JavaScript Data-Binding Libraries
Data binding is one of the best features of XAML, so it's no surprise that this functionality has become more popular in HTML5. Several great JavaScript libraries help bring common and often-used patterns to HTML5/JavaScript development. Two of my favorite libraries that add data-binding features are Knockout JS, and JsRender with JsViews. There are others, but these are the two I've found most useful and they make it a lot more fun for me to write HTML5 apps with JavaScript.
Retemplating a Control and Adding Visual States with Expression Blend
Learn how to easily create a toggle button in Expression Blend by retemplating a control and adding visual states. In my last post I showed how easy it easy to create a few shapes, convert them to paths, and apply transforms to them. The result was a path that looks like Figure 1, shown in the Blend designer. In this post I'll walk through the steps to retemplate a control to use our creation, and to add visual states to it.
Windows Phone Challenges for Microsoft
When it comes to Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is making headway. But it still has a ways to go, especially in the area of apps. I have a huge family. All of my relatives who have smartphones -- including my nieces, nephews, sisters and even my father -- sport a Google Android-based device or an Apple iPhone. Me, I have a Windows Phone. I'm a developer and it's often hard to separate from that position and put myself in the role of an end user. But lately I've been trying to do just that with my phone.
A Unified Approach to Client-Side Storage
This simple API can give you a leg up on local storage in your Web apps. Web apps, generally, have sets of data that either don't change a whole lot, or that represent state -- the configuration, content and attributes -- which must be maintained between page calls. HTTP offers a variety of great features, but state has to be reset between page calls because it's stateless. So where do you store that data in Web applications? The concept of local storage addresses this challenge quite nicely.
Expression Blend Drawing Tips
Papa shows how to build a simple button using Expression Blend. I'm an addict. I admit it. I love creating simple animations and states with Expression Blend. Yeah, Blend isn't perfect and it's not free, but there are some real advantages to using it. I hope after reading this some of you may see how quickly and easily you can create visuals.
MVVM in 5 Minutes
Want to see Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) without all the "helpers"? Perhaps you thought I was kidding in my previous column, "Fundamental MVVM". Now, I love helpers for things like commanding, behaviors, messaging and locators. But I'm holding to my earlier statement that these things help MVVM, which is all about separation; they do not make MVVM. That's an important distinction.
It's Beautiful, But is it Sustainable?
Software, even the most beautiful software, needs to be developed with an eye toward those who will be maintaining it in the future. We can design and develop beautiful software, and also make it flexible and maintainable. (This is the point where the peanut gallery chirps "Maintenance? We don't need no stinking maintenance!" Maybe you don't, but your company might.) Developers face many choices when designing a multi-layered application.
Windows 8 Animations Library Creates Better User Experiences
Windows 8 has great built-in animations, which can draw users deeper into your app. Earlier this month Microsoft put Windows 8 Metro style apps on display at the Build conference in Anaheim, CA. I had the pleasure of presenting a session on styling, animations, and templating for Metro style apps using XAML . I was excited to present my session, for many reasons, but what really stood out to me: the way animations have been given first-class status in Windows 8.
Git Involved in Open Source
Developers are contributing to more than a million projects on GitHub -- why aren't you? Many developers are not only great problem solvers, they also excel at sharing code. Their roles often lead them on journeys where they have to fill a gap, create a widget or simply build a better mousetrap. It's part of the continual evolution of our industry. And lately, developers are sharing more libraries and code than ever. Several factors have contributed to the sharing trend.
5-Minute Tour of CSS3 Background Gradients
Major browsers support CSS3 gradients (including Internet Explorer 10), but with different rendering engines, it's still good to have fallbacks. Designing the presentation layer of an HTML5 application requires some familiarity with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). You might want to set the background of an element or set of elements using the latest standard definition of the language, CSS3.
Easy Web Development with jsFiddle
jsFiddle is a free code-sharing tool that allows you to edit, share, execute and debug Web code within a browser. Have you ever wanted to test out a new idea with some JavaScript and CSS quickly to see if you're on the right track? Have you ever wanted to share your source for HTML, JavaScript and CSS sample on the Web and allow people to run it? If so, you need to check out jsFiddle.
An Entity Framework Book Worth Your Time
A new book on Code First Entity Framework is a concise, readable guide to the technology. House plumbing isn't sexy, but I wouldn't want to live without it. Nor would I want to neglect the primary plumbing of my application architecture: data access. Using an Object Relational Mapper (ORM) such as the Entity Framework (EF) properly is paramount, which is why it's important to have solid resources to rely on. Julie Lerman's first Entity Framework book has become the "book of answers" for EF.
The Impact from Windows 8, in 2012 and Beyond
Time is causing Windows to evolve, but those changes offer new opportunities for app developers. Time is causing Windows to evolve, but those changes offer new opportunities for app developers. When a meteor crashes into our planet, it's apt to leave a swath of scorched earth in its wake. Some things in its path are decimated, but it also brings new changes that might take years to shape. In 2011, Windows 8 made a similar mark as it first made its impact.
Running Windows 8 in a Virtual Machine
The advantages of using virtualization, and specifically VirtualBox, to develop on the Windows 8 platform. Windows 8 has a lot to offer to developers, whether your skills lie in HTML5, XAML or even C++. The bits for the Windows Developer Preview are out and you likely want to give them a test drive, but you also want to be careful to get up and running quickly without affecting your existing system.
Getting the Most out of Twitter
Twitter has revolutionized social networking. If you're not optimizing it, you're missing out. Twitter has become a fantastic conduit for learning and sharing information, especially for developers. I learn a ton about current emerging development technology, patterns, events, and news through Twitter. Sure, there is a lot of noise but there are simple ways to filter the noise out and hone in on the value.
3 Impacts from 2011, and What they Mean Moving Forward -- Part 1
Papa's Perspective on Kinect, Silverlight and Microsoft's changing relationship with developers. Change is good (and also inevitable). We all want technology to evolve, but it's also human nature to become attached to technology and behavior that makes us comfortable. As we just wrapped up 2011, it's a good time to look back at the impression that 2011 leaves on us and what it all means moving forward. Here are three key developments in the past year from Microsoft, and their possible meanings.
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