A Cloud IDE provides a complete development environment running on a server in the cloud, instead of you running it on your developer workstation. In this article I will discuss general advantages and disadvantages of Cloud IDEs, provide a Cloud IDE comparison of the best 9 IDEs I found, and give recommendations on how to … Read more
Collaborative code editors let developers write code together in real time, just like Google Docs. This article compares Microsoft Live Share, Code with me, Floobits, CodeTogether, GitDuck, and CodeInterview. I clearly demonstrate the limitations and benefits of each tool, including how it integrates into existing IDEs, end-to-end encryption and pricing. I’ll conclude with recommendations for … Read more
Microsoft 365 groups are the foundation for managing users and permissions in many other applications, such as Teams and SharePoint. This article introduces the group’s other functionalities, group inbox and calendar, how to access them, and why they are sometimes difficult to find. I also explain different options that simplify scheduling of events in Outlook, … Read more
Teams is Microsoft’s communication platform that offers video meetings and text-based chats at work that happen in one or more team rooms. Learn how Teams integrates with SharePoint, how you can plan your team structure (including private channels), and discover several non-obvious features of the app. Introduction Microsoft Teams is a cloud application, which you … Read more
SharePoint, which is part of the Microsoft 365 cloud, offers collaboration features for your team. I present the three main features of SharePoint, explain the difference between communication vs. team sites, and elaborate on how the membership management works. Finally, I discuss important caveats you should be aware of. Introduction SharePoint is a cloud application … Read more
The Microsoft 365 cloud is a complex system with a large number of apps, such Teams or SharePoint. If you were introduced to the Microsoft 365 cloud without proper training, you likely misunderstood how the different apps integrate with each other, and believe in myths due to an incorrect mental model. This article explains the … Read more
This article is a link collection for Python developers who want to go beyond the basics. It presents my personal favorite articles and libraries for various use cases. Introduction Whenever you fall in love with a programming language, you will wonder what you can do with it, beyond the basics. Most modern programming languages come … Read more
This article describes an experiment where I apply acoustic fingerprinting and speech recognition to detect duplicates in my personal collection of episodes (mp3 files) of the German radio play “Philip Maloney”. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, and present the results of applying the Olaf acoustic fingerprinting implementation. Introduction Acoustic fingerprinting (Wikipedia) … Read more
With PlantUML you can create diagrams as plain text code. This article covers several advanced features, e.g. how to choose the right output file format, or using the include-mechanism effectively. I also explain how you can generate code from PlantUML diagrams (and vice versa), or how to work on a model-layer by extending PlantUML’s syntax. … Read more
With PlantUML you can create diagrams as plain text code. PlantUML takes off the burden so that you don’t need to worry about the looks and layout of your diagram’s elements, by applying opinionated defaults. This article is both a PlantUML layout tutorial, which explains how you can customize the layout, and also explains how … Read more