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Welcome back, tech enthusiasts! 🚀

This week, we’re diving into exciting new GitHub Copilot features, major security concerns, and some big shifts in Azure and .NET development. From AI-powered coding agents to one of the largest US government data breaches, there’s plenty to explore.

Here’s what’s in store:

• 🤖 New Copilot features: Vision, Agent Mode, and improved commit messages

• 🔐 Major US government data breach—what it means for security

• 🏗️ How to promote your open-source project and build a community

• 📊 Azure Data Studio is retiring—time to switch to VS Code

• 🛠️ RabbitMQ, MassTransit, and new LINQ methods in .NET

With AI shaping development workflows and security risks increasing, staying informed has never been more important. Let’s dive in!

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GitHub Digest

A whole bunch of new Copilot features was released in January. Take Vision, where you can upload a picture and let Copilot analyze it. Or Agent mode, where Copilot can iterate over its own results.

Thomas Dohmke provides some more details, describing how agents will start appearing to help you with all kinds of coding tasks.

Working on an open source project and feel like where is everybody? I have been there; thought I created the solution everybody wanted and would help me out with.

Of course, it does not work like that; you will need to put some effort in to make your project survive in the open source. GitHub lists a number of tips to promote your open source project.

A cool feature I use GitHub Copilot for when I have a completely new repository; analyze and give an overview of the code. But you can step up your game and ask it for a graphical representation by letting it generate mermaid diagrams.

A useful feature; let Copilot draft the commit message. I do not always like what it puts there, but it appears you can instruct it to generate other types of messages.

Coding Corner

Already been called one of the biggest breaches of US government data, and we still have to see what kind of effects this will have. Not only in the USA, but also abroad, as there is no guarantee where data is ending up.

Due to the recent changes in the USA, we see a rise in alternatives, like for cloud hosting, messaging, VPN, DNS, etc. The below site has them listed in multiple categories.

Might be a bit oversimplified, but good to check your API implementation against it; a list of common mistakes when building HTTP APIs.

Azure Updates & Insights

I recently installed Azure Data Studio and found it very extensive and useful, so I was surprised to see that it was actually retired in favor of Visual Studio Code. Although I see the benefit, I also liked that it was just a dedicated tool for accessing SQL.

I think that building microservices with Azure Container Apps and Dapr is a great fit, so good to see this tutorial.

.NET Nook

Long time ago I used RabbitMQ; what a great messaging system that it is. And still going strong as this tutorial shows where it combines it with MassTransit.

Did you know about the Chunk, the Zip, or the Index method extensions? These and more have been introduced in the recent .NET versions.

Closing Thoughts

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