One of this year’s most memorable experiences was my participation in the Microsoft Hackathon in October. It was actually the first hackathon I ever joined as a “hacker”. I was just by myself (not in a group), with lots of good intentions and a great spirit to achieve one simple goal: learn something new while having fun with other colleagues! I took the opportunity to spend 2 and a half days exploring the world of Azure App Services to host a simple ASP.NET Core Web API application on Azure.
Combining my current work experience with the help of Microsoft Docs and of course precious tips from other fellow hackers, I learned:
- How to use Entity Framework Core to access data stored in an Azure SQL Database and use EF Migrations to handle database schema changes
- How to use the built-in Authentication middleware to automatically support user authentication through the most common identity providers
- How to completely forget about application credentials such as database connection strings and solely rely on Azure Managed Identities to seamlessly handle service-to-service authentication
A full immersion to better understand the building blocks and state-of-the-art requirements of a modern scalable application running in the Cloud.
Looking forward to the next hackathon! Thank you, Microsoft, for offering these invaluable opportunities. I believe nowadays our daily schedule is getting more and more hectic and finding quality time for work-related learning is challenging. I do believe though that learning should be a top priority because it’s the best long-term investment we can do for our professional growth.
