Testing with LocalStack: AWS on your Laptop

If you build on AWS, you need **LocalStack**. It mocks almost every AWS service (S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS) on your local machine via Docker, allowing for free, fast, and offline development. Docker Compose Setup Configure AWS SDK (.NET) Key Takeaways Use `awslocal` CLI wrapper for convenience: `awslocal s3 ls`. Great for testing IAM policies and […]

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Designing gRPC Services: Error Handling Best Practices

In REST, we use HTTP Status Codes (404, 500). In gRPC, we must use `RpcException` and `Status` objects to communicate errors rich in metadata across service boundaries. Standard Status Codes StatusCode.NotFound -> Entity missing. StatusCode.InvalidArgument -> Validation failed. StatusCode.FailedPrecondition -> ETag mismatch / Conflict. Interceptor for Global Error Handling Key Takeaways Never expose internal stack […]

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Visual Studio 2022 64-bit: First Impressions

For the first time, Visual Studio is 64-bit (devenv.exe). This removes the 4GB memory limit that has plagued developers of large enterprise solutions. We successfully loaded a solution with 1,600 projects. Performance Specs **Memory Usage**: Can now exceed 4GB (we saw 8GB usage on giant solutions). **Find in Files**: 3x faster using the new indexing […]

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Dapr v1.0: Building Microservices for Any Cloud

Dapr v1.0 is production-ready. It solves the hardest parts of distributed systems: State management, Service Invocation, and Event-driven messaging. This guide implements the “Virtual Actor” pattern using Dapr actors. Virtual Actors Actors are single-threaded units of state and logic. Dapr handles their lifetime (activating them when a message arrives, deactivating them after timeout). Output Bindings […]

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Azure SQL Hyperscale: 100TB Databases

Traditional Azure SQL Database is limited by the disk size of the underlying VM (4TB max usually). **Hyperscale** decouples compute from storage, allowing databases to grow up to 100TB with rapid scaling. Architecture Why use it? **Instant Backups**: Backups are file-snapshots, taking zero IOPS from the compute. **Fast Restore**: Restoring a 50TB database takes minutes, […]

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