Bell Canada Internet Pricing Scam
· ☕ 3 min read
Just one week into the agreement, I found that my bill had been increased to $80. Upon contacting customer service, I was informed that Bell's internet price had been increased to $130... The terms of my original agreement were clear - a $30 discount from the public price. That meant my new monthly bill should be $60, not $80... While the increase in my bill might not be significant enough for a court case, it leaves one wondering about the ethical implications.

Competitive Pythonic Shorthand
· ☕ 5 min read
Competitive programming can be a thrilling challenge, and every second counts. Python, known for its simplicity and readability, also offers a variety of shorthand techniques that can save precious time. In this guide, we'll explore some of these Pythonic strategies and how they can give you an edge in coding competitions.

Running WSL2 GUI Apps in Windows 10
· ☕ 3 min read
All of the answers I found online suggest using a complex workflow of installing X server, configuring RDP and connecting to your Linux box in order to run its GUI app. This approach is at least a few years old. It is no longer the most efficient way in 2023. Instead, you can use WSLg.

Converting to .NET 6 Core
· ☕ 7 min read
Suppose we need to convert a legacy .NET 4.5 MVC or API project to .NET Core 6.0. It might sound like daunting task at first, and if you never did this, might cause you headache for a few days/weeks, or even months depending on the size of the project. In this article I will do my best to reduce that headache by giving you starter info and some follow-up articles to learn more about the topic.

Webpack - Preserve Class Names During Minification
· ☕ 3 min read
Suppose you have the following ES6 code and you want to have a refactor safe way to output the service name without instantiating an object. MyFancyService.name will work fine in dev, until you decide to minify it with webpack. You see, by default, class names will be minified, and at runtime the above code line will become something like Ab.name.

.NET Architecture - eShopOnContainers
· ☕ 2 min read
Below video is from 2018, so almost 3 years old now, but somehow I only found it now. It's a handy overview into microservices, has a few gotchas such as avoiding internal communication when fulfilling client requests, to reduce latency, as well as async workflows like adding items to cart.

Jetbrains .NET Days 2021 - Notes
· ☕ 13 min read
Here are some of the notes I took while attending Jetbrains .NET Days 2021 online event - for select sessions from Days 1 and 2. Specifically, I skipped 1 session from Day 1 (React/CosmosDB), and only watched 1 session from Day 2 (AWS/Kubernetes). This is similar to my earlier MS Build notes articles.

Speed of Coding - Important?
· ☕ 5 min read
When hiring software developers, it seems that recently the focus has been on the speed of coding. Many companies give automated 1-1.5 hour coding tests where your code can be of low quality, as long as it passes all unit tests. Is speed of producing the initial dirty version of the code actually important in modern software development?

The Outsourcing Trap
· ☕ 6 min read
Outsourcing is a trap most big and mid size companies fall into. Advising to outsource is like advising someone to walk on a rope. Sure 1 of 100 would be careful and do it right. What about the other 99?