Rubber Duck Debugging in the Age of AI # Ever found yourself explaining your code to a little rubber duck perched on your desk? If so, you’re in good company. This quirky practice, known as rubber duck debugging, has helped countless developers articulate problems and discover solutions. The idea is simple: by forcing yourself to explain your code, line by line, to an inanimate duck, you often stumble upon the bug or insight you needed. It’s like having a silent pair programmer who patiently listens as you work through the logic. But what if your rubber duck could talk back and offer suggestions? Modern AI coding assistants (like GitHub Copilot) are becoming the new interactive rubber ducks, and that means a lot for debugging, brainstorming ideas, and reviewing code.
I wanted to share a quick work update and also explain why I’ve been posting less frequently lately. Previously, I was on the Fast Track for Azure (FTA) team at Microsoft, part of the Customer Experience Program (CXP) within Azure Engineering (C+AI). In October, my team was reorganized and I was moved into the Azure Reliability (AzRel) group.
I’m now part of the AzRel Risk SRE team, focusing specifically on risks related to Azure Platform Reliability. My new role brings with it a significantly different skill set and area of focus, requiring a deep dive into new concepts, tools, and approaches. I’ve been fully engaged in learning and adapting, and I’ve also been actively developing new applications and solutions to address challenges faced by my new team.
Last week, I spoke at the Copenhagen Developers Festival about using GitHub Codespaces for cloud-based development. This is an amazing conference with an incredible lineup. I’ve done this talk plenty of times, sharing how flexible and convenient cloud development environments can be. But this time, things didn’t go as planned.
I had a real world example today that I wanted to share about copilot helping me with a coding problem. A friend reached out asking if I knew regex. Its been a bit, but I was happy to help because I thought we could figure it out.
This is part 2 of the Containerizing .NET series. You can read the series of articles here:
Containerizing .NET: Part 1 - A Guide to Containerizing .NET Applications Containerizing .NET: Part 2 - Considerations Considerations # Welcome to the second installment in our series on containerizing .NET applications. Building on the foundation laid in our first article-where we introduced Dockerfiles and the dotnet publish command-this piece delves into pivotal considerations for transitioning .NET applications into containers. As containers become a cornerstone of the ecosystem, understanding these factors is critical for developers aiming to enhance application deployment in containerized environments.
This article is part of the Festive Tech Calendar 2023. For more articles in the series by other authors, visit https://festivetechcalendar.com/.
Dev Containers can revolutionize the way we approach development environments, offering a fast, consistent setup across different projects. As a developer who uses Dev Containers in VS Code for various projects, I’ve experienced firsthand the benefits of having an environment that’s ready to go as soon as I clone a project.
