Interesting stuff i found - September 2025
Refactoring Stubborn, Legacy Codebases
Stripe rediscovers that strong typing is great, unfortunately their code base is in Ruby so they have to write a type checker themselves :P
I do like the approach of gradual rollout though, and the architectural-constraints-as-code approach is something I also use on complex projects (usually NetArchTest but I am not sure it is maintained anymore?)
Refactoring Stubborn, Legacy Codebases
Mackie’s Pizza
If you live in Aarhus, you probably remember Mackie’s Pizza. It turns out one of the people who made pizza there now has a food truck
TUnit
Another contender in the NUnit/MSTest/XUnit space. Since I maintain code in both .NET Framework Classic and .NET 8+, a framework that can work in both is appealing. Not sure how Playwright integration looks atm, but one to watch.
Converting an xUnit test project to TUnit
Decision tree for app authentication
One of the greatest features of public cloud is the ability to simply not have any passwords to steal, i.e. managed identities. While I have previously been bitten by the fact that Azure Managed Identities do not have a SLA (and they started running slowly), I still promote and use them heavily.
Workload identity federation is also great if your platform supports it. Certs are a bit of a pain, but still better than rotating client secrets…
Decision tree for app authentication
AutoHideMouseCursor
I have purchased an OLED screen, and of course I now have burn-in anxiety. So I have switched everything to dark mode, and am looking for tools to remove static elements from the screen. AutoHideMouseCursor is an older but no-nonsense tool that will hide the mouse cursor after N seconds
TranslucentTB
Also in the “burn-in prevention” category, this tool allows control of the task bar. Install with
winget install 9pf4kz2vn4w9
Rooting every Entra tenant
Insane vulnerability. I remember early Azure and the ACS, and have gone many rounds with SAML-based actor tokens - never without signatures though! I guess it all still exists behind the scenes.
Really shows why security infra legacy and bridging is not just a maintenance burden - it is also a ripe opportunity for holes and unintended access paths to creep in.
One Token to rule them all - obtaining Global Admin in every Entra ID tenant via Actor tokens
Azure RG Janitor
Nice little example of using Spectre.Console and the dotnet 10 features around scripting C#. I like TUIs almost as much as my favorite iconoclast DHH does.
Aikido Safe Chain
NPM Supply chain security is a huge issue, this tool looks like an easy way to at least stop some of the malicious stuff being pushed again and again.
CloudKitchens Study on GenAI DevEx
A nice point-of-view on pratical usage of AI coding agents. I have not tried Cursor, but I find it interesting that they rate Copilot highly - need to look into that, as my use so far has not left me impressed.
From CQRS and back - Netflix Tudum
Reading the article, I also question if this is not a case of too many resources leading to extreme over-engineering. I would think cloud services like CosmosDB (of which I am sure there is an alternative in AWS where Netflix lives) could handle the scale with read-your-writes, and even if it cannot, I would imagine ample opportunity to leverage output caching before reaching for dedicated read models with Kafka in between.
I guess the takeaway is like Kelly writes: “Consistency at scale is easier than ever.”. Many architectural patterns exists to handle extreme scale, which in itself is a shrinking concept as cloud services, networks and even on-prem hardware gets more and more powerful.
Netflix revamps Tudum with RAW Hollow (via the brilliant Kelly Sommers)
AZ-204
Passed the exam this month. I found the Whizlabs material and practice tests quite nice for preparation, and reasonably priced, so a completely unbiased recommendation from here. Together with Microsoft Learn (which can be used during the exam but beware), that was what I needed to pass.
Liberating structures & Open Practice Library
I do not have a use case right now, but these team practices seem like a nice catalog to get inspiration from, if you need to run team sessions or tighten up some internal processes.
Liberating structures Open Practice Library via Gregor Hophe - looking forward to attending his workshop next week!
Vibe coding a “me-ware” tool - wslcd
I was annoyed that I could not cd to Windows paths (like C:\foo\bar) copied from Total Commander to the inside of WSL (which mounts them under /mnt/<drive letter>). Copilot had little trouble conjuring up wslcd. I have not even looked at the code (beyond basic “is it deleting my drive” review), and it seems to be working well.
A fun exercise, and “my” first, actually useful Golang project. Perhaps long term using zoxide or even Mark Russinovich’ new jcd would be a better option, but for now this tool solves exactly what annoyed me.
Azure Front Door Gateway Timeout issues
We have been troubleshooting an incident with Azure Front Door, which seems to have lingered for a while. I hope Microsoft will eventually produce a more robust solution of the root causes than retries…