So Build is well underway, and I finally got around to diving into some of the talks that are online. One of my early favorites is Anders Hejlsbergs talk on news in TypeScript.  Anders gives a good run through of the TypeScript typesystem, starting with the basics and covering why it is so different from other type systems, and in many ways ground breaking work even for a language designer like him. More...

Another year has flown by, and it has been quite a change of pace for me. With my daughter being born last year, I have had to prioritise more than ever. Not really a surprise, but when you are going into it you don’t really know what will be possible. Looking back it has definitely changed my every day life for the better, although I have had to cut down on some spare time activities.

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I recently started a new project, based on my own medicine of not using a framework, but building a simple architecture, that can grow and change freely based on needs as they arise. It is coming along very nicely, and has allowed us to have a pretty clean architecture.

For this project we chose to base the solution on TypeScript, and use handlebars for views along with a few other small libraries. As a clientside build tool we wanted to use webpack, because it is fast, has a lot of plugins that we can use, and is well suited for working with css modules. More...

I have been happy working with TypeScript for quite a while now, and I am happy to say that things are moving ahead with the language quite well. It is not that long ago that TypeScript version 2.0 was realeased, and with steady releases we are now at version 2.3.

One of the big things that came to TypeScript in version 2.0 was discriminated union types and the option to do strict null checks, which combine quite nicely. Discriminated unions are simply done using the pipe operator, and the compiler will do strict null checks if you use the --strictNullChecks switch. More...

A while ago I heard about some JavaScript Services that Steve Sanderson was working on for .NET core. The central idea was to provide services that could use NodeJS within an ASP.NET application, allowing us to consume all the awesome modules that are written for node. This can allow us to do a number of things, like prerendering and better integration between client and server that can run the same code.

Recently I ran into a new article about the work they are doing on JavaScript Services, and it seems to be far enough along now, that I think it is really worth trying out.
The documentation is really well written, so I won't write step by step instructions, but simply point out that it can be found on github and that it is pretty easy to get going.

What a year this has been, and now is the time for my yearly review. Work wise my business has been very simple to run and very stable, because I have continued to extend my contract with DI. This may sound boring initially, but the reason this has worked for me is that I get to dive into a lot of technologies especilly around Azure and Visual Studio Team Services. I have been building a greenfield self-service application, for one of the biggest and most influential organisations in the country, while having the hands on the wheel with reguard to tech and design. So although I have not been moving on to new projects as much as I expected I am loving it.

One of the really nice things about Azure Webapps is the support for running Webjobs. Most large webapplications will at some point need some data or media processed by a background process, and for that Webjobs are a perfect fit.

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A few weeks ago Microsoft introduced the concept of "Cool" Blob Storage on Azure, which means that you get REALLY cheap storage for data that you don't access very often - backup being an obvious usecase. In my case I have used Dropbox for backups for a while, and although it works fine for a certain amount of data, it is not really a good fit for backing up that family photos and videos once a year from the home NAS.

A core value that Azure brings to modern projects, is to enable developers to take control of the deployment process, and make it fast and painless. Sure scalability is nice, when and if you need it, but the speed and flexibility in setting up an entire environment for your application is always valuable - so for me this is a more important feature of Azure. Gone are the days of waiting at best days, most likely weeks and maybe even months for the IT department to create a new development or test environment.

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Visual Studio Online was recently renamed Visual Studio Team Services, which more accurately tells you what it is about. Sure, you can still browse and edit code, but it is just one feature, and not really a core one at that. On my current project I have had the chance to dive in a little deeper, and have a look at some of the features that VSTS has to offer. Although I have often been critical of these kinds of products, VSTS has been mostly a pleasent acquaintance.