I am excited to announce the release of my new book, Build and Deploy Apps using Azure Developer CLI, a practical, hands-on guide for developers and...
Chris Pietschmann
Chris Pietschmann is a Microsoft MVP, HashiCorp Ambassador, and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with 20+ years of experience designing and building Cloud & Enterprise systems. He has worked with companies of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. He has a passion for technology and sharing what he learns with others to help enable them to learn faster and be more productive.
Comparing Azure Front Door, Traffic Manager, and Load Balancer: Choosing the Right Tool for Global Application Delivery
Modern cloud architectures demand flexible, resilient, and scalable traffic distribution strategies. As workloads increasingly span multiple regions and hybrid environments, choosing the right load balancing service in Microsoft Azure becomes a strategic architectural...
From Stuck to Senior: How Mentorship Accelerates Your Cloud, DevOps & AI Career
The journey from junior engineer to senior Cloud, DevOps or even AI professional can feel like climbing an ever-growing mountain. New tools. Shifting best practices. Complicated architectures. Add to that the pressure of staying relevant in a sea of LinkedIn updates...
Big Thinkers: Tim Berners-Lee – Inventor of the World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, a name etched into the bedrock of computing history, stands among the most influential figures to ever touch the digital sphere. Credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989, his groundbreaking work at CERN sparked a technological revolution...
Software Innovation: jQuery – The Tiny Library that Transformed the Web
"Write less, do more." That motto wasn’t just a clever tagline—it was a revolution. Before modern JavaScript frameworks became the norm, jQuery quietly changed everything. In the web development landscape now dominated by React, Angular, and Vue, it might be easy to...
How to Write AI Prompts That Output Valid CSV Data
When working with Large Language Models (LLMs), generating structured outputs like CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is invaluable for tasks such as data analysis, reporting, and integration with spreadsheet applications. However, since LLMs are primarily optimized for...
Big Thinkers: Douglas Crockford – The Man Behind JSON and JSLint
Douglas Crockford is a renowned figure in the programming world, celebrated for his pivotal contributions to JavaScript and the creation of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). While not traditionally categorized under cloud computing, his innovations have profoundly...
Semantic Search PDF Files Locally using .NET / C# and Build5Nines.SharpVector
The ability to extract and semantically search through unstructured documents is becoming not just a convenience, but a necessity. This is especially true for software developers working with large repositories of technical documentation, compliance reports, or...
Extract Text from PDF Files with Python for use in Generative AI and RAG Solutions
When building Generative AI and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) LLM-based solutions, the quality and structure of input data significantly influences the performance of the LLM models. PDF documents, a prevalent format for information dissemination, often contain...
Semantic Search in .NET / C# with Build5Nines.SharpVector
As developers, we often find ourselves building smarter, more context-aware applications. Whether it’s powering a document search tool or implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), semantic search is a powerful capability to have in your toolbox. I recently...
Software Innovation: Ruby on Rails – The Framework that Rewired The Web with MVC and Convention
It wasn’t the first web framework. It may not be the flashiest these days in 2025. But Ruby on Rails was revolutionary when it hit the scene — and its fingerprints are still all over modern web development today. At a time when building web applications was often...
Microsoft and Anthropic Collaborate to Develop Official C# SDK for Model Context Protocol
Microsoft has announced a partnership with Anthropic to develop an official C# Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This collaboration aims to streamline the integration of large language models (LLMs) into C# applications, addressing...
Software Innovation: Git – Distributed Version Control System That Changed Everything
Few tools have been as transformative — or as quietly omnipresent — as Git. Now twenty years old, Git is not just a version control system; it’s the backbone of global software collaboration. From solo developers hacking on open-source projects to multinational tech...
Big Thinkers: Scott Hanselman – Empowering Developer Community Worldwide
Few voices in the Microsoft and .NET space rise above the rest as much as Scott Hanselman. He's a developer, teacher, speaker, and currently the Vice President of Developer Community at Microsoft. For over two decades, Scott has been a connecting force in the tech...
How to Write AI Prompts That Output Valid JSON Data
When working with LLMs, an extremely valuable use case is generating structured data as the output response of the AI prompt. Whether you're building an app, prototyping a data pipeline, or performing data extraction or transformation, receiving structured outputs...
From BASIC to Copilot: 50 Years of Microsoft Technology Innovation and Leadership
There are few companies in the history of technology — or business, for that matter — that can say they changed the world. Even fewer can say they did it more than once. As Microsoft marks its 50th anniversary, it’s hard not to marvel at just how much of our modern...
Big Thinkers: Anders Hejlsberg – The Architect Shaping the Cloud’s Programming Future from C# to TypeScript
Few names carry as much respect and recognition among software developers as Anders Hejlsberg. As the creator of Turbo Pascal, the chief architect of Delphi, the original designer of C#, and now the lead architect of TypeScript, Hejlsberg has shaped the way millions...
How to Build and Deploy an MCP Server with TypeScript and Azure Developer CLI (azd) using Azure Container Apps and Docker
Large language models (LLMs) are revolutionizing the way we build software. But as the scope of intelligent applications grows, so does the need for structured, contextual communication between LLMs and real-world data, services, and business logic. This is where the...
Applying Terraform Changes to Specific Resources using the -target Argument
Managing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform is as common as CI/CD pipelines and incident response playbooks. However, there are moments when you don’t want Terraform to touch everything. Maybe you need to quickly redeploy an Azure Function App, or perhaps a...