Published intedspence.com·Nov 16Daily Docker tips and tricksA collection of simple techniques to build better containers Let’s skip the pleasantries — today I’ll write a short article with a few tips and tricks I have found handy while working with Docker. Preserve database container data using volumes I love how containers allow you to delete your infrastructure and recreate it at any time…Docker3 min readDocker3 min read
Published intedspence.com·Nov 8Loading data from MongoDB into your Jupyter notebookTroubleshooting common Mongo problems for a new notebook project Loading data from a database is a routine operation for most software engineers. …Jupyter Notebook8 min readJupyter Notebook8 min read
Published intedspence.com·Oct 24Using AWS single sign-on within your Docker containersTreat your containers like first-class AWS instances with SSO If you deploy applications to Amazon AWS EC2 instances, you probably make a lot of use of Amazon-specific features. In my case, I happen to use Amazon’s Systems Manager to store configuration parameters for my applications. When developing code locally I…Docker3 min readDocker3 min read
Published intedspence.com·Oct 22Mixing Docker and native DotNet applications for local developmentHow to write an application that can be run separately or inside a container Perhaps you work in a company where developers are fond of microservices. …Docker5 min readDocker5 min read
Published intedspence.com·Oct 15Improving on TypeScript package build processesSimplifying the compile, package, and publish process for a TypeScript SDK Many years ago I wrote Bundling a TypeScript library with RollupJS. At the time I was building the Lockstep (now Sage) software development kit for TypeScript/JavaScript. …Typescript6 min readTypescript6 min read
Published intedspence.com·Oct 7Writing REST and OpenAPI documentation for a broad audienceOne author’s theory of how to write usable documentation without going crazy The key to a useful API is documentation. You could have the most gloriously orthogonal REST API or a crummy half-baked SOAP service — the technology behind your API is less important than whether a developer can use…Documentation9 min readDocumentation9 min read
Published intedspence.com·Aug 22Publishing a DotNet tool on NuGetHave a small utility program? Make it available to download on NuGet I maintain a small SDK Generator that I use for building C# packages to work with REST APIs. …Dotnet4 min readDotnet4 min read
Published intedspence.com·Aug 2A SQL Server docker container with full-text searchWriting a dockerfile that adds features to an existing image — I wrote containerized SQL Server on Docker a few months ago when I migrated my company from a “developer desktop setup tutorial”-style environment to a “docker compose up”. Using SQL Server on Docker, we were able to end manual installations of SQL Server which wasted developer time and made it…Docker4 min readDocker4 min read
Published intedspence.com·Jul 24Building applications on a monorepo with Docker containersTips and tricks for more complex Docker container build scenarios It’s important to make your new developer onboarding process simple, and a great way to do this is by using Docker Desktop to configure a computer for development rather than installing programs directly. Instead of installing MongoDB locally, you install…Docker5 min readDocker5 min read
Published intedspence.com·Jul 14What makes a good API key system?The complex usability challenges of authentication for unattended API calls The days of storing usernames and passwords in a database have been over for a long time. If you have a website, your users should log on using either OAuth or SAML. …Security8 min readSecurity8 min read
