Jesse Liberty

Just posted on Packt: Writing Unit Tests with ChatGPT

I wrote this blog post in September of last year, and looking at it today I realized that I don’t use a couple of these anymore:

1) Resharper: the overhead was borderline too much and most of the refactoring power I used is now cooked into Visual Studio

2) Beyond Compare: never did get the hang of using this for git conflicts. Still searching for the right thing

3) OneNote – lost a lot of data with this and switched back to Evernote. Very happy with the change.

Finally, I still use Git Copilot but would move it to the top of the list. Integrated with Intellisense, it is by far the biggest productivity booster I know of. Can’t wait for CoPilot X!

I have changed jobs within my current company (CNH Industrial). I will no longer be doing mobile programming (for the first time in six years) and will be building APIs and back-end code!

I think you can expect fewer articles on mobile/ .NET MAUI programming, and more on ASP.NET Core, Azure Functions, APIs, Architecture, Microservices, etc.

I’m also scoping out writing a book which may include the following topics:

• Creating the back end (SQL Server & SQL)
• Azure (Docker, Azure Functions) & Localhost
• Designing and creating the Minimal API (architecture, end points, etc)
• Creating the front end ( .NET MAUI )

The book would assume only that you have some C# experience. We’d also cover tools, setup, and best practices. All of this would be in the context of a non-trivial application.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on such a book. Please feel free to send me email at jesseliberty@gmail.com.

In Stores Now!

Very excited about this book. Feedback is very welcome at jesseliberty@gmail.com.

Thanks!

My latest book: Learn .NET MAUI — An Essential Guide for C# Developers will be released March 31, 2023.

Given the existence and likely enhancements to the .NET MAUI Community Markup Toolkit for C#, and that many people will come to MAUI with little or no XAML (or will know XAML and hate it), I was tempted to show all of the code in C#.

But the truth is that most extant User Interface code is in XAML and anything you can do in C# you can do in XAML. So, at least for the first edition, the majority of the code is in XAML with one full view recreation in C#

Here is the Table of Contents:

1. Assembling your tools and creating your first app
2. What we will build: Forget Me Not
3. XAML and C#
4. MVVM And Controls
5. Advanced Controls
6. Layout
7. Understanding Navigation
8. Storing and retrieving data
9. Unit Tests
10. Consuming a REST API
11. Advanced Topics

I’m eager to hear your ideas about this decision.

Thanks.

Triggers in .NET MAUI are not that different from triggers in Xamarin.Forms, but since this is not a frequently used feature, I thought I’d provide a quick deep-dive into their usage.

Triggers allow you to declare, in your XAML, how a control should appear based on data changes. You can combine state triggers with Visual State, a topic I’ll cover in a subsequent blog post.

This is the first of a series of short pieces based on material in my forthcoming book .NET MAUI For C# Developers (Packt* Publishing) which we are targeting for publication in early April.