Just Five Mins!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever you want to call it! A couple of links from the show: https://hanselminutes.com/922/education-should-be-free-with-freecodecamps-quincy-larson Blinkist: Best Book Summaries - Black Friday Deal Until the next time, take care. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Go on! you need this! Wow, I know this gets used everywhere, but you have to say, his enthusiasm was right there, along with a rather sweaty shirt :) But does he care? probably not since he is a billionaire, right? Well, replace "developers, developers" with "AI, AI" - I just don't have the time or skills to do a clever video rework! But goodness me, AI does seem to be moving at a pace. Of course, the key bit is trying to find some really practical ways to use it! :) So, the first thing is the Humane pin. Is this the Apple iPhone moment for smartphones generally? well, it is a device that "pins" to your jacket/shirt etc. (although I would say it is more like a badge!). Interesting concept given that it is in the realm of a pricey smartphone but without a screen as such - although it does have a cool green laser which will display stuff on your hand when you hold it out in front of you. It is completely driven by AI, and that accounts for the $699 price tag but also $24 per month for the mobile/cell access. I am not sure about the rest of the world as yet, but I am guessing it will be equivalent pricing. Here is a link to another news article coving the key points. Also, the drama of OpenAI of late: OpenAI (who bring you chatGPT) board of directors fired Sam Altman (CEO) apparently for not exactly telling the truth... but about what you ask? After a couple of days, Microsoft (a big investor in OpenAI) offered a job to Sam Altman and anyone else from OpenAI The day after, it seems the OpenAI board of directors were disbanded (although I don't know the exact scenario!) and Sam Altman was back as CEO Allegedly, the reason for this "not telling the truth" bit was about the latest internal GPT (or otherwise!) possibly named "Q*" internally having reached AGI status. AGI means "Artificial General intelligence.". Basically, the AI can reason and approach a problem as a human could (although there are many, many descriptions of AGI!). So many more things, but that will do for today! Take care until the next time! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

A heavily Microsoft slant for this one! Where do I begin... well, have a listen, and if you really want to know more I have summarised the overall .NET conf stuff below :) .NET Conf 2023 Keynote - Welcome to .NET 8 Introduction .NET Conf over the next 3 days, hear from team, partners, and the .NET Community about what's new in .NET and things people are building with it. Goal: build a unified development platform that developers love and businesses trust, enabling them to build any kind of application with best-in-class runtime, programming languages, development tools, and a vast ecosystem. Momentum: .NET used by over 6 million developers, adopting the latest version faster than ever, over 50,000 contributors to date, the most admired framework on Stack Overflow survey, and one of the highest velocity open source projects. Launching .NET 8, one of the largest releases, built with trust and contributions from developers worldwide. "Tomorrow our goal with .NET is to build a unified development platform that developers love and businesses trust." Performance Improvements in .NET 8 .NET 8 brings over 1,250 performance improvements. Significant improvements in performance across frameworks and programming languages. Notable improvements in the TechEmpower web framework benchmarks using ASP.NET Core, with an 18% improvement in the Json API scenario, reaching nearly 1 million requests per second. In the Fortune scenario, which simulates real-world workload including database access and HTML rendering, a 24% improvement was achieved, reaching over 300,000 requests per second. ".NET 8 brings over 1,250 performance improvements." Full Stack Web Apps and APIs with ASP.NET Core in .NET 8 ASP.NET Core in .NET 8 offers everything needed to build modern web apps, whether browser-based or scalable backend services. No need to stitch together multiple frameworks, as ASP.NET Core provides a complete solution out of the box. Includes Blazor, a front-end web framework for .NET, which allows using server and client together for full stack web UI needs. Blazor in .NET 8 provides enhanced server-side rendering, navigation, and streaming rendering, optimizing page load time and elevating the user experience. Improved performance in Blazor WebAssembly, with components rendering 20% faster. New tooling enhances developer experience in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. "ASP.NET Core in .NET 8 has everything you need to build modern web apps... No need to stitch together a solution from multiple different frameworks." "Blazor now includes enhanced server-side rendering capabilities... so you can optimize page load time and elevate the user experience." New APIs and Enhanced Tooling in ASP.NET Core for Productivity ASP.NET Core in .NET 8 packed with new APIs that boost developer productivity. New tooling in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code enhances the developer experience. Route Tooling in .NET 8 highlights route parameters and provides helpful warnings for unused parameters. Primary Constructors feature in C# 2 allows concise syntax for declaring constructors with parameters available in the entire class body. Enhanced Web CIL packaging format for deployment simplifies the process. New built components for displaying data, defining section outlets, and handling authentication improve productivity. "ASP.NET Core in .NET 8 packed with new APIs that allow you to be more productive." "New tooling in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code enhances the developer experience." Endpoints Explorer in Visual Studio Visual Studio has an Endpoints Explorer tool that allows developers to browse all routes registered in their application. The routes are discovered statically, so there is no need to build or run the application to see them. "I don't need to build or run my application in order to see these routes. They're all discovered statically." Generating Requests for Endpoints Developers can select any endpoint and right-click to generate a request for it. Visual Studio has a built-in HTTP request client that shows the request and response right within the IDE. "I can select any of the endpoints that I've created, here's my new one and right click to generate a request for it. This request will show up in Visual Studio's new built-in HTTP request client." Testing API Endpoints It is important to test API endpoints before shipping to production. The speaker shares that they have already started writing tests for the API endpoint. They mention using collection expressions, a new C# 12 feature, to provide a parameter value for a method that takes an IEnumerable. "I've added a new test to exercise the API endpoint that I've just introduced, and I'm using another cool new C# 12 feature, collection expressions, to provide a parameter to a method that takes an IEnumerable." Debugging and Fixing Test The test fails because it was not able to find the route associated with the new endpoint. The speaker sets a breakpoint after registering all the

Okay, so I re-watched "Das Boot" again recently and, of course, immediately thought, "what would this look like with cats?": So, there it is! I enjoyed the theme music to Das Boot too, but it then reminded me of a techno version from the early 90's can you believe? Anyway, what the heck does this have to do with the subject at hand? well, "Das Prompt" came to mind for some reason! or "prompting all the way to the bank". The gratitude chain: Thanks to Tim Abell for sending the link JayJen_X on twitter/X Keep well and until the next time, goodbye! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Okay, you might not be as old as I but surely you remember Blondie! Heart of Glass But heart of glass is what we are talking about today - when talking about all of this data we are creating! Where does that data go? how is it stored? well, in most cases, the data is stored on hard disks (SSD or otherwise) and for backups/long-term storage it is mostly still down to tape! yes, the 80's cassette tapes are not forgotten! :) Enter Microsoft Project Silica. Storing data (more like backups, not fast read-write stuff like in your laptop or phone... yet!) in glass. Take a look at the video here which explains more. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Another browser? Well, a browser with some nifty tricks up its sleeves perhaps! It also still uses the chromium engine, so no worries about another browser compatibility war! The browser company has developed a new bundle of AI-powered features called Arc Max. The goal of Arc Max is to make the internet experience faster and easier for users. Some of the features of Arc Max include 5-second previews, which provide information on restaurants or other websites by simply hovering over a link; tidy tab titles that shorten and organize the titles of open tabs; automatic renaming of downloaded files to make them easier to find; and an AI-powered search function called "Ask on Page" that quickly finds specific information in articles or web pages. I love their release video - brilliant lesson in marketing and to have some fun along the way, take a look here. Until the next time! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Okay, I am not sure they sell Wispa chocolate bars internationally, but worry not, this podcase has nothing to do with chocolate (sadly!). Use Whisper AI to transcribe audio from video/different audio formats in any language and produce the text of the audio We are talking Whisper AI from the good folks who brought (and totally destroyed our world! :) ) ChatGPT to the unexpected masses. Read to the end to see how you can run Whisper AI as a docker container :) The reason you might not have heard of it as much as ChatGPT is because you will generally need to run Whisper AI yourself or use a cloud service as an example. I have played with Whisper AI via Python/PyTorch using the Google Collab service which you can use for free (need to check the actual info here!) to work with some of these types of use-cases. In my case, this enabled a VM of sorts to actually run Python/PyTorch to interact with Whisper AI. So, Whisper AI itself is pretty amazing but then add the fact you can of course now make the transcriptions searchable. In my case I am already working with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search for this type of thing however, you could also use something like OramaSearch which allows you to use JavaScript to perform powerful search capabilities to not only find the text but also time-link to the audio itself. There is an example where a developer has used Astro (JavaScript framework) to stitch the UI side together - I will get a link to that. But now the real golden nugget: you can run Whisper AI as a docker container! oh yes, but make sure you have some decent PC performance :) This opens up new opportunities of course not in the least being able to run on your own infrastructure. Until the next time, take care. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

So, is it game over for Docker? probably not! What is Podman then? "PodMan is a container engine that helps us with developing containers, managing both the containers and the images, and deploying containers." On the surface, very similar to Docker i.e. Podman runs containers from images just like Docker. However: Daemon-less Approach PodMan uses a daemon-less approach, unlike Docker. Docker relies on a background daemon process, known as the Docker Daemon, to perform various container-related tasks. In contrast, PodMan performs all tasks directly from the client itself, using a fork-exec model. This architecture makes PodMan more efficient, lightweight, and secure. Root versus Rootless PodMan offers a root-less approach, which adds an extra layer of security compared to Docker. Running applications as root can have security implications, as vulnerabilities could potentially affect the entire system. However, running applications as non-root within containers limits the impact of any exploited vulnerabilities to just the container itself. This difference in approach between PodMan and Docker enhances the overall security of containerized applications. OCI Compatibility Both Docker and PodMan are based on the Open Container Initiative (OCI) standards. OCI sets standards for container technologies, ensuring compatibility and interoperability. This means that many of the commands used in Docker, such as pulling, pushing, and building images, are also applicable to PodMan. So, until the next time, take care. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well, if you don't get the joke in the title gif/images, then perhaps this will help (yes, it is an old movie but still very funny!). I the "Airplane" movie is still one of my favs! So, vectors and what the heck they are all about. Well, of late, vector databases have been getting a lot of visibility as well as established database vendors (Postgress etc.) adding vector database functionality. Vectors appear in many AI/programming contexts, but one realm is text embeddings used in a lot of AI models to represent words/phrases etc. as arrays of numbers that can be used to find similar things. Two great videos below will explain vectors, text embeddings and vector databases a lot better than myself! A great 30 min intro to text embeddings A quick dip into the world of vector databases (yes, the Fireship guy again!) Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Oh, I wish they had called this Bunee! So, another week another framework! But this one is clever, I think. BUN is a drop-in style replacement for NodeJS. Aims to be much faster and includes a lot of things out of the box including its own package manager/bundler along with native support for tests and SQLite. Because BUN has pretty much full compatibility with NodeJS, you can use NodeJS modules and of course NPM - but for new projects, you could probably find most native API's have got you covered. The next thing for myself is to try BUN with HTMX (the Javascript-less frontend library) as I can see (for some projects) some amazing productivity gains for a lot of my webapps! No bunee's were harmed in the making of this podcast :) Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Yes! you can run (some!) Azure AI services locally! Rather than repeat, I have a blog post here to explain a little more. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

So, you want to quickly build a web page or web pages? You might be familiar with Squarespace, Wix, Webflow etc. all of which use these visual designers to help you quickly build the webpages you desire. The only issue is you are locked in to their platform hosting and of course monthly/yearly subscription costs. Webstudio is a really neat open source version - very much like Webflow and currently in beta (although very feature rich already!). The visual editor is available as an online app or you can download the app for Windows, Mac, Linux. I have a feeling (sorry! not investigated enough here!) it is based on or around something like Electron (I did a podcast a while ago about this). But the other good news is you can take the hosting part of this open source project and host the web apps you build anywhere you like... locally, docker or your hosting platform of choice. Webstudio do offer hosting themselves - actually they use CloudFlare workers which provide a serverless hosting model sort of like AWS Lambda/Azure Serverless etc. They have a free tier too if you want to use their hosting to try things out. As you can tweak/embed Webstudio in your own apps too, this really does make for an interesting option to not be locked into one platform and endless costs - obviously always check the licensing! Open source = Awesame Sauce perhaps :) Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

There really is no limit what you can do these days - even without JavaScript! Once again, I have been inspired (aka stollen!) by a video from FireShip.io, this time about something called HTMX. It is HTML on steroids (without the nasty side effects of JavaScript :) ) Sprinkle in a few HTML attributes and you have a new way to build modern web apps without touching a line of JavaScript. HTMX even has a client-side router (boost) to enable the single page app (SPA) feel. Would you still need JavaScript? perhaps, however, for a lot of apps and more so these days using headless CMS systems (builder.io is a fav of mine) to return snippets/islands of pre-rendered HTML, then this might be a useful tool in the magic dev tool box. Here is the official link to HTMX. If you want to read a little more too, please visit my blog post here. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Blazor: The Microsoft framework to create web apps (and more!) without JavaScript (but you can have some if you like :) ). I have already written a ramble that goes with this episode - take a look here if so Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

50th Episode! yeah!! that hardly anyone listens to ;) Hey, can't take yourself too seriously right? Anyway, the end of Stackoverflow as we know... sort of similar to the classic REM song - you must know it! unless you were born after the year 2000 possibly! I wrote a little rambling blog post about a week or so ago about the rebirth of Stackoverflow. I guess they had to pivot/innovate given their traffic stats and the introduction of ChatGPT and similar tools (not to mentioned GitHub Co-Pilot of course). Anyway, the new breed of Stackoverflow (AI) has some interesting features... take a listen! it really is about 5 minutes long this time! OverflowAI link here Just for reference, the announcement video is here too! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Ahh yes, AI... just take a deep breath. So, Prompt Perfect. Why? well, if you are playing around with things like ChatGPT, MidJourney and so many others, you will notice very early on that you do need to be quite specific in your asking to generate the desired outcome be that images/text or whatever. This includes providing both positive and negative prompting. Sure, you can persevere and keep trying, but who has the time? Enter Prompt Perfect. A sort of IDE for prompting, but not just a clever wrapper around ChatGPT it seems. There is a massive shift at play, as we all know, but also emerging markets riding the wave of the current AI explosion. I wrote a short article (mini podcast) about Vellum a few weeks ago. Vellum received $5m investment for building prompts via an IDE and pipelining the process with GitHub integration and all sorts of things. Also, there are prompt marketplaces emerging everywhere it seems! yes, you can buy and sell prompts for goodness sake! One example is Prompt Base Anyway, I digress yet again! Prompt Perfect is essentially a way to "design" prompts. It has a beginner level where you can explorer basic prompts and Prompt Perfect will embellish/enhance the prompt to be more descriptive. You can then move to the intermediate/advanced options where you can specify more settings and get "under-the-hood" so to speak! But, for the finale. Using Prompt Perfect, you can add parameters to a well defined prompt and turn that into an API. You can then share that API or indeed sell it... if it is a restricted niche... As promised, there is a prompt engineering institute! What a strange world we live in! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well! I have heard of PostgreSQL of course and even looked at it years ago only to think "oh, it is just another database" - which it is, but I hadn't realised how clever it is! It has been around for years/decades of course! Michael Stonebraker (aka King of the Databases) is behind it of course and I had forgotten VoltDB too which is worth a look and an episode at some point! (in-memory databases eh?) PostgreSQL is an open-source relational database management system. It was developed in 1986 at UC Berkeley under the direction of Michael Stonebreaker. It stores data in tables, columns, and rows. Uses structured query language (SQL) to read and write data. PostgreSQL is technically an object-relational database. It can create custom data types to store objects with properties. Supports advanced features like inheritance and polymorphism. PostgreSQL uses multiversion concurrency control (MVCC). MVCC gives each transaction a snapshot of the database, allowing multiple transactions to run simultaneously without traffic jams or locks. Some amazing features for sure! The official PostgreSQL link is here and also NEON which is a cloud-based serverless offering for PostgreSQL. Most definitely a slow learner in this case! Oh, and of course, Azure has a PostgreSQL offering too ;) just in case! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

So, what is flutter? Flutter is the multi-platform framework from Google to build apps on any screen. It uses Dart as the programming language (very similar to Java/C# etc.). From a Microsoft perspective, this is a similar idea to Xamarin or now MAUI. One thing jumped out to make app designing/coding easy within Flutter is something called Flutter Flow. Worth checking out as it provides a nice graphic UI experience to build apps for desktop/mobile etc. but also provides clean code - not some weird export that you cannot use elsewhere! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Just Five Mins you say? this one tracks over a little! Too much AI indeed. But, what is worth it to you? ChatGPT (not to be mistaken for "catGPT"), as we know, was the game-changing AI release a few months ago now. There have been so many new releases of other AI based ventures of late including Google Palm2 and Gemini as well as up-coming KOSMOS-1 (and 2 coming soon) from Microsoft all aiming to hit this multi-model sweet spot. For example, being able to interpret images, music and other abstract data. Here are the links for this JFM for reference and a deeper dive if you need to: 7 New ChatGPT Plugins ChatGPT just levelled up big time Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Okay, so we have "evolved" from green-screen terminals to GUI (Graphic User Interface) ways to execute commands and now for years really, we are back very much in the command line world. Executing scripts or commands isn't difficult, but remembering them is! WARP seems to be addressing this by offering a new take on command line terminals. With WARP drive (yeah, that engage gif!) you can store your workflow/scripts/commands in a nice neat way, share with your team - oh and it is, of course, AI :) Cannot quite remember that command to change permissions? use AI! :) Thanks to my good friend Tim who sent this through - WARP is written in RUST and Tim has plenty to say about that! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Tired of paying for Dropbox, Google Drive, Onedrive etc.? Fear not! You can create your own storage solution: In your own network/home Cheap Linux machine/windows machine Docker Container There are lots of these solutions around, this one jumped out so check out the details. Link to FileCloud here (Enterprise type features, but has a community edition) NextCloud - aimed more at the home user A link to the original video I watched - crazy, but useful and informative and way more in depth than my measly effort! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

The true zombie effect... JavaScript will never die! Even though Douglas Crockford said the best thing we can do with JavaScript is to retire it. Look, i get it, JavaScript isn't brilliant, in some cases, but it is what it is and I can't see it disappearing any time soon. The horse has very much bolted so much so you might want to start using "light years" to specify how far! There have been so many attempts to replace JavaScript over the years. I honestly thought Dart we do that job or any number of others, but here we are. So, even though I have only touched briefly on this, Blazor! yes, that word! I did an episode or two-way back however, things are changing a bit in the new release of Blazor (I believe coming in .NET 8 especially). So, Blazor. It has been out for some time now and came in two main flavours, web-assembly (client/browser) and of course the server-side version. I will probably do a separate episode for the Blazor updates. Not that millions have already done videos/blogs but hey ho, no harm in adding to the internet! The key "big thing" seems to be Blazor united - mix-n-match web-assembly with server-side/SSR. But let's leave that for another episode! Here is another link referencing "JavaScript should be retired" - just in case! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Yes, blockchain in your database! well, why not! From distributed procurement systems to logistics and of course accounting based scenarios, having ledger (blockchain) tables at your disposal isn't a bad thing... well at least I don't think so. But, why would you need this? what problem does it solve? Here is a longer introduction: (3) Blockchain in your database - by David Sheardown (substack.com) Of course, there is also the official Microsoft site about ledger tables: Ledger overview - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn One more, a really good video overview that shows some use cases and demos: Bringing the power of blockchain to Azure SQL Database and SQL Server with ledger | Microsoft Learn Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Okay, giggles aside, this is a really slick way to visualise and work with JSON data.. but hang on, not just JSON but XML as well as others. This reminds me a little of schema explorer by my good friend Tim. When I first saw this, the website was only for JSON data it seemed. However, upon returning to the site, I was presented with another editor view called Herowand (excellent names!). Herowand seems to be the JSON editor AND an editor for XML, YAML and something called TOML :) I had never heard of TOML but JSON and XML of course is my daily diet ;) A very cool set of projects, open sourced and available on GitHub (I think written in NextJS unless I am wrong). You can also use VS-CODE to add the viewer as an extension which is really useful or of course embed into your own product or website. Read the license information as always though! possibly consider becoming a patreon if it is useful :) Link to JSON Crack itself here Link direct to Herowand for the combined JSON, XML etc. editor here Link to the GitHub repo here Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Today we are taking a QUIC look at some interesting changes to the very fabric of the internet... yes, HTTP! Some new changes coming to help speed up mobile/cell internet and help with those pesky network switching annoyances! Also, some fundamental security updates too of course. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Why would you need a headless CMS (Content Management System)? Very good point! If you have ever used WordPress, Webflow, Wix etc. then you know what a CMS is - a platform to allow you to create a website/blog or whatever it might be. That is great and works for a lot of people however, what if you want to have a slick visual CMS experience in your own website where you host it wherever as just a plain HTML website (although you can get more complex of course)? Builder IO provides the slick visual CMS aspect, user management, role-based access and all of the admin boilerplate, and you can decide where and how to include the CMS "bits". For example, if you have a basic HTML website with 10 pages, you might want 3 of those pages to be "fully CMS capable" (from header to footer so to speak) then you might only want a section or even component on a couple of other pages to be managed by the CMS. You can decide what goes where very easily. So, Builder IO is aimed at mostly a developer type audience but with the concept of providing a very slick and easy to use CMS without you having to re-invent the wheel. There is a "hook" to Builder IO of course - the visual CMS bit to edit those elements/pages however, if you decide to stop using Builder IO in the future, your site is still your site and will continue to work, just you won't have the visual CMS part of course! Pricing isn't too bad at all - a very generous free version. The documentation is very clear and well presented. Very easy to add Builder IO to pretty much any frontend development i.e. Vue, Angular, React, Svelte or Qwik which I believe the same people created as a very fast JavaScript framework - not tried yet, but looks impressive. Builder IO also has a nice Figma import option to magically create the HTML... At first, for myself anyway, I was confused a bit about how this all works - is Builder IO like WordPress? do they host the sites? but after realising they are providing the visual magic and you can use that "output" how/wherever you like, the penny dropped - finally! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

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When the cloud isn't enough ;) Azure ARC lets you manage off-cloud infrastructure within the same familiar Azure environment, along with governance, security and visibility from one unified viewpoint. Azure Arc – Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Management and Solution (microsoft.com) Azure Arc for Developers (microsoft.com) Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well, it has been a couple of weeks or so since the last JFM mostly as I have been "lost in the machine" so to speak! So much A.I. stuff happening, good or bad? who knows! I can understand the concerns, but right now I am feeling the A.I explosion is providing some useful assistance within various tools/landscapes. Today, I am looking into a few interesting ones: Microsoft Copilot - who wants to remember how to do vlookups anyway! Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work - The Official Microsoft Blog GitHub Copilot X - They say code is poetry so why not speak code :) along with a few other interesting extras! GitHub Next Fancy wiring your brain up to GPT? well, you can! Neurosity have just a device! you can even use the Javascript SDK to get data from the Neurosity crown device :) Fireship YouTube channel takes this to the next level! :) (340) I literally connected my brain to GPT-4 with JavaScript - YouTube Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Yet another low code development environment, but this one has some interesting twists! Retool is a low code development environment which has a browser based IDE to allow you to build internal apps very quickly! you can connect to lots of database systems out there, including SAP HANA which is interesting from my day-to-day role :) You can also connect to a wide variety of API's including GraphQL, gRPC and custom REST API's - of course there are pre-built connections to a lot of popular API's such as Salesforce, Shopify to name a couple. An additional bonus that caught my eye is the fact Retool allows a FREE version for up to 5 users, both cloud based and locally hosted! The local hosted model is very interesting since you have the option to host the Retool stack in AWS or wherever you wish in addition to being able to run Retool locally via a docker container :) that means you can run Retool on your laptop/PC or indeed on an internal server. Again, this is FREE for up to 5 users. The IDE is browser based and mostly drag and drop to build UI interfaces. You can define your queries both via SQL script or via a GUI to assist you. Definitely a cool low code environment to check out! BONUS! They also have a native mobile option in beta/preview currently! again, worth checking out for sure. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well, the name explains it! we are all a little lazy sometimes ;) Introducing Lazy Docker - essentially a way to manage your docker environment from a command line with a command line UI (not unlike the days of MS-DOS!). This is a good thing BTW! it is nice to have a clean, easy to use and quick way to manage your docker environment. Sent in this time by my good friend Tim Abel. Tim also has a podcast worth a listen over here: Software should be free. So, check out lazy docker - very easy to install and get going, and again, simplifies managing docker without having to remember the docker syntax! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well, nothing like a light bit of listening! Web 3.0? Over hyped/Over used term? perhaps, but there are nuggets in them thar hype-fields! Way too much to discuss in 5 (or even 6) mins! but I try... Certainly, the world of decentralised "whatever" is here and has been some time. I might delve a little deeper into some of the subjects of Web 3.0 including Blockchain generally, dApps of course, and NFT's - trying to make sense, and importantly, make use of any of these emerging technologies. Some links I have been referring to: Inrupt - the organisation with Tim Berners-Lee Solid - PODS to store your data securely and keep control of Article from Telerik here Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

AI is taking over! well, maybe not quite, but it is and will continue to be embedded in our day-to-day lives. For this episode, I have been exploring Motion (links below). An app to use AI to organise your life. Uses the concept of "time blocking" (link below) and essentially lets you pull in all of your calendars (personal and business) as well as a variety of todo apps, and keeps them in sync but attempts to use some good old AI to attempt to organise the important things you need to focus on. In my honest opinion, the app is a bit pricey (no affiliation BTW, just my own observations!), but then if you think about synchronising all of your calendar/todo's anyway with the advantage of some organisation/planning, maybe it isn't too expensive. Also, if you do pay, then there is probably more chance of actually employing good practices the app is attempting to help with! This concept/idea is certainly one for myself - keeping focus on the important tasks whatever they may be (work/family/unicorn racing, whatever!). Here is the link to the motion blog article about time blocking. Also, the link to the main app page. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

An interesting journey working with Docker over the years. Docker is great for containerising your apps, but what happens when you start to have a lot of containers and/or you want fail-over support? Well, even though Kubernetes (also known as K8S for short!) isn't the only orchestration tool out there, it is fairly common and a "go to" for a lot of devs. Setting up and managing K8S can be a handful, but if you you use Docker Desktop on your OS of choice, you can take advantage of "Docker Extensions". One being "harpoon" to visually create and manage your K8S landscape. Open up Docker Desktop and click on Extensions. Do a search for "Harpoon". Also, if you want a nice introduction to Kubernetes, check out this link. I do love ByteByteGo articles! Here is a link to the Harpoon extension. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

This time around we have some VPN and Tunnel info. Lots of VPN solutions out there, but I wanted to highlight one that I have been using (successfully!) which has a really nice free version too! The VPN (but also has tunneling capabilities and more) is TailScale Also, Cloudflare, which is a massive cloud based set of services everything from network management/firewall/caching and goodness knows what to, yes, tunnels too! For more of a Microsoft/Visual Studio specific option, you can check out dev tunnels too. Why do you need a tunnel? well, lots of reasons to perhaps want secure access to your own machines (although, always be careful what you expose and ensure you understand what it is you are doing!) or, in my case, I might create some API's or apps that I want to test/show online without having to host to start with. Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well now, who would have thought a guest episode! My very good friend Tim Abell (podcast "software should be free") has kindly created a Just Five Mins about asdf.. not just the handy set of keys on your keyboard! Use asdf to "Manage multiple runtime versions with a single CLI tool". I could have done with this a week or two back! Even though poor old Tim was suffering a bit, his audio still sounds better than mine! :) I nice easy way to be able to change versions - especially for dotnet and node for myself! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well, more databases! but this one has a few tricks up its sleave! In the realm of things like Firebase, Supabase etc. Pocketbase aims to offer a similar feature set but is open source and deploys as one file... Pocketbase doesn't offer any hosting like Firebase/Supabase, so you can use this within your own environment/cloud hosted server. Can be used within Linux/Windows/Mac (both x64 and ARM). Take a listen. I think this is a useful set of tools if you need to build something more than just a datastore app! Oh! and of course, many thanks to this video for bringing Pocketbase to light! (388) PocketBase... The Ultimate Side-Hustle Backend? - YouTube Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Nearly at the end of 2022... LTS! Reason to think carefully about using an LTS (long term support) version of software! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Yeah, you bet! We all know the AI world is changing things for us if we like it or not. ChatGPT is coming... and I don't think we can stop it! we can embrace it in the right way of course. Old news now, but worth a listen honest! From a developers perspective, check this video out: (320) ChatGPT can write better code than me - YouTube Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Okay, where to start! Well, couple of episodes back I talked about how Docker are previewing Docker with WASM (Web Assembly). So WASM became popular from Blazor the Microsoft tech to essentially bring compiled .NET code into the browser (and lots of other technologies can be used with WASM of course!). Seems WASM, and WASI, are moving from just browser based to other worlds including the server/cloud. This JFM talks about Fermyon who have something called SPIN to create event driven microservices using WASM (instead of say Docker containers). They also have a cloud offering which seems more compact/faster than possibly Docker containers (i.e. the current container tech that is!). Link to the Fermyon article here: Fermyon Built a WebAssembly Cloud to Push Serverless Microservices Beyond Containers (infoq.com) Also., what is WASI: Wasm, WASI, Wagi: What are they? | Fermyon Technologies (@FermyonTech) Link to the Fermyon cloud here: Fermyon Cloud | Fermyon Developer And finally, the GitHub Repo for Fermyon SPIN here: fermyon/spin: Spin is an open source framework for building and running fast, secure, and composable cloud microservices with WebAssembly (github.com) Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

A very cool, probably mis-understood, nugget this time around! Natively calling REST based (actually HTTP based, since you can call GraphQL too!) within Azure SQL database! I have done something similar years ago using OLE style SQL coding, but this felt a little clunky and goodness knows what the performance issues might have been! This is native.. this is Azure SQL Database so, given the managed nature of the "server" within Azure, it feels/sounds like it has stability. This is only public preview.. I had seen an early adopter version but it didn't really sink in.. Take a look at the blog post from Davide Mauri.. at first it might not click what you can do.. but when you think of Event Grid/Hub and Azure functions to name a couple, the landscape really opens up! Azure SQL Database External REST Endpoints Integration Public Preview - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner (microsoft.com) Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well can you believe I had an episode about Hasura all the way back 2+ years ago! even though it was Episode 14 ;) This is a revisit. In my case, Hasura didn't have full MS-SQL support back then, which is where I live mostly, but it does now! along with MongoDB, Postgres to name just a few. Worth checking out: Instant GraphQL APIs on your data | Built-in Authz & Caching (hasura.io) Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well, Docker isn't new of course but it has evolved over the years. Now we are seeing Docker WASM - Web Assembly. But why does this matter? Take a listen! Further information here: Why Containers and WebAssembly Work Well Together - Docker Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Who needs an ARMy of ARM chips? !! This episode is all about "project Volterra" or Windows Dev Kit 2023 - an ARM based hardware offering from Microsoft that packs a punch! Seems everything is going ARM based these days, so why not join in! More info here: Available today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 aka Project Volterra - Windows Developer Blog Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

For those who are older enough to remember, this could be counter for this: (84) Steve Ballmer DEVELOPERS - YouTube and yes kids, this is how Microsoft attracted.. you guessed it, "developers" :) So, as part of my attending "Microsoft Anonymous" sessions, this episode is all about LINUX, LINUX, LINUX! well, as much as I can pack into about 5 minutes! I do like the feeling of being able to develop on Windows, Mac and now Linux - I realise people have been doing this for years of course! Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Wow, well you wait two years for an episode and two come along! This time it is Tauri - a cross platform development stack built on Rust with an incredible small deployment footprint. Supports HTML/CSS/JS type technologies (Angular, Vue, React and whatever too!). Provides an installable desktop bundle for the main OS's with lots of lovely features for you to check out. Main Tauri Website Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Well, it has only taken 2 years to create a new Episode! This one is getting very rusty... SurrealDB is written in Rust but, although that is cool anyway, it is what SurrealDB has to offer.. take a listen! Link to SurrealDB: https://www.surrealdb.com Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

Show notes here: https://justfivemins.com/ep-17-cross-platform-desktop-apps-with-electron-net/ Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

https://justfivemins.com/ep-16-low-code-no-code-maybe-just-a-bit-of-code/ Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe

For the full show notes, please visit: https://justfivemins.com/ep-15-latest-news-and-grpc-updates/ Get full access to Just Five Mins! at www.justfivemins.com/subscribe