SmashDev

GitHub Pull Requests and Issues VS Code Extension

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 09:00:00 -0800

The other day I was starting to review a large pull request on GitHub’s website. I was getting frustrated with the experience (overall slowness of the web UI), so I decided to see if there was a better way. I found the GitHub Pull Requests and Issues extension for Visual Studio Code.

This extension allows you to view and comment on pull requests and issues directly within Visual Studio Code. For large pull requests, it’s a much better experience than using the GitHub website, and it’s a great way to stay in the flow of your work.

Installing the Extension

The extension is available in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace. You can install it from within Visual Studio Code by searching for “GitHub Pull Requests and Issues” in the Extensions tab.

After installing the extension, you’ll need to sign in to GitHub (VS Code should be prompt you to do this).

Using the Extension

You’ll see a new icon in your Activity Bar (the left sidebar within VS Code). Clicking on this icon will open the Pull Requests and Issues tab.

The Pull Requests tab will show you all of the pull requests for the repository you have open in VS Code. You can create a new pull request by clicking on the “Create Pull Request” button at the top of the tab.

Then you can select your base branch, provide a name and description, and click the “Create” button.

After creating the pull request, you’ll see it in the Pull Requests tab.

Now for the good part! You can easily review and comment on any file in the pull request by clicking on the file in the Pull Requests tab. To add a comment, hover over the line of code you want to comment on and click the “+” button.

After writing your comment, you can add the comment or start a review.

You can also reply to existing comments or resolve conversations.

Give It a Try

Want to give it a try? I created a simple “Happy Holidays” repository that you can use to test out the extension. Send me a message and I’ll add you as a collaborator (or you can fork the repo and create your own pull request). You can find it here: smashdevcode/happy-holidays.

Resources

If you’d like to learn more pull requests and using the GitHub Pull Requests and Issues extension, check out the following YouTube video:

YouTube: Pull Requests in VS Code

AI Podcast Playlist

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 17:00:00 -0700

Over the last month or so, I finally got over my “get off my lawn” old-man reaction to generative AI (specifically ChatGPT) and started ramping up on the topic. I’m starting at a point of needing to learn more about machine learning, large language models, or anything AI-related, so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

One of the things I’ve started to do is to get back into listening to technically oriented podcasts. It’s a great way to engage my mind while I’m out for my lunchtime walk around the neighborhood.

Below are the podcasts I’ve listened to (in the order I listened).

Have you listened to any of these podcasts? What did you think? Are there any podcasts that you’d add to this playlist?

James’ AI Podcast Playlist

1) .NET Rocks: The Inflection Point of Large Language Models with Grant Barrett

2) Software Engineering Daily: Surviving ChatGPT with Christian Hubicki

3) Baggage: How worrying is generative AI?

4) Hanselminutes: Protecting Machines from Us with Lelapa AI’s Pelonomi Moiloa

5) Baggage: Is GPT-4 the dawn of tree artificial intelligence?

6) Baggage: What if generative AI destroys biometric security?

7) .NET Rocks: Building Apps using OpenAI with Mark Miller

8) .NET Rocks: No Free Lunch in Machine Learning with Jodie Burchell

9) Baggage: Vint Cerf on how to wisely regulate AI

Time for a New Challenge

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 17:00:00 -0700

“Change is the only constant in life.” - Heraclitus

Back in 2015, when I switched from working full-time as a developer to working as a Software Development Instructor at Treehouse, it felt like a dream. I had always wanted to teach, but I thought that was something I’d do when I “retired”. I learned all that I could and hoped that the opportunity lasted long enough for me to establish myself as an educator.

When I was unexpectedly laid off from Treehouse in June 2019, I wasn’t sure what was next. Would I be able to find another education-related job? Or would I need to return to working as a developer?

The same week that I was laid off, I met Curtis Schlak from App Academy. Curtis found out about the layoffs at Treehouse from a friend of a friend of Nick Pettit, one of my coworkers who had also been laid off at Treehouse. Curtis viewed Nick’s Twitter feed and saw his retweet of my Tweet announcing that I was looking for work.

Curtis sent me a message through LinkedIn wanting to know if I’d be interested in teaching a 10-week C#/.NET bootcamp in NYC. To be completely honest, I was a bit skeptical. Was this a “real” opportunity? Do people actually just go and work in another city for multiple months? And if this was a real thing, could I make this work? Could I make the leap from teaching asynchronously online (via video) to teaching synchronously in-person?

Of all of the options that were available to me, pursuing the opportunity with App Academy felt like the riskiest, least predictable option. But it was also the option that I was most excited about, so I decided to go for it. That turned out to be a good decision.

Teaching in NYC last year turned out to be some of the most challenging, meaningful, and rewarding work of my career, not to mention the amazing people that I got to know at App Academy and WOS (the client that we were delivering the bootcamp for). After the completion of the bootcamp, I joined the team that was developing the curriculum for App Academy’s new online bootcamp. This allowed me to work remotely (back home in Portland) and to provide for my family during uncertain times.

While I’ll always be very grateful for the opportunities that App Academy has provided me over the last year, it’s time for a new challenge. Next week, I’ll be joining Genesis10’s Dev10 Program as a Lead Instructor. I’m excited about the opportunity to return to teaching.

I feel so incredibly lucky to be able to continue to focus on my passion for helping others become developers. Thanks so much to everyone over the years who have helped me get to where I’m at today. I intend to make the most of my situation.

Graduation and Reflecting Back On My Experience Teaching in NYC

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 16:00:00 -0800

Last year, I taught a 10-week .NET/C# Full Stack Web Development bootcamp in New York City (Astoria, Queens). This last Monday (1/27), I attended my students’ graduation from the education/training part of the program provided by Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) and their client PSEG. Graduation was an opportunity for me to reflect back on my experience.

The Bootcamp

The curriculum for the bootcamp covered a lot of ground. Week “0” of the bootcamp, taught by fellow App Academy instructor Alvin Zablan, introduced the students to Git, HTML, and CSS. I then took over as the instructor for the next 10 weeks. We started with an introduction to C# and .NET, followed by no fewer than three ASP.NET web frameworks (Web Forms, MVC, and Web API). We also covered essential topics such as security, SQL Server, Entity Framework, React, and of course, JavaScript.

Each week of the bootcamp had the students working on projects as a way to reinforce their learning. Some projects were shorter projects that could be completed in about a day, while other projects were longer (2-3 days), that required the students to apply all of their learning up to that point. Students created pull requests in GitHub for all of their projects, to model real-life development work as closely as possible and to give me a way to provide detailed feedback on their code.

The students also received weekly personal and interpersonal skills training, taught by Addie Rimmer from WOS, that prepared the students for working in a professional business environment. This is just one example of the work that WOS did to that made this bootcamp a unique experience for all involved.

Every day presented new challenges, but the work was some of the most rewarding that I’ve ever done in my career. Having 10 weeks to work closely with my students gave me an opportunity to understand how best to help each of them as they worked their way through an intense amount of content.

I’m thankful for App Academy for giving me the opportunity to be involved in such a unique experience. Helping to create the curriculum for and teaching an in-person bootcamp was the perfect segue from my time spent at Treehouse. Curtis Schlak and Mike Rudinsky extended me a tremendous amount of trust right from the beginning and were always there to support me when I needed it.

Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS)

My students were one of three cohorts that were part of WOS’s Talent Acquisition Pipeline (TAP) program. Through the TAP program, WOS provides individuals with the technical and interpersonal skills training that they need to prepare for careers at companies such as PSEG, who was the sponsor for these particular cohorts. You can learn more about the important work that WOS is doing here.

None of this would’ve been possible without the amazing work of everyone at WOS. A representative from WOS was in the classroom every day, supporting the students and myself, ensuring that we had what we needed to be successful. I also appreciated how the talented folks from WOS helped to make me feel welcomed as I acclimated both to the class and to the NYC area.

My Students

Lastly, I’m thankful for my wonderful students. We all learned a lot together and had a good time along the way. Congrats to John Vera, Jason Lu, Mohammed Salam, Sarthak Thakur, and William Lawlor for graduating from the program and good luck with all of your future endeavors!

Treehouse Blog: React, Angular, Vue

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 17:00:00 -0700

Once you’ve mastered the basics of JavaScript, selecting a front end JavaScript framework can be a difficult, confusing process. You’ve probably heard of React and Angular — now there’s this new thing called Vue?

You don’t have time to learn all three. So, how do you choose?

Continue reading this blog post on the Treehouse Blog.

Treehouse Blog: Take Time for Reflection

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 16:00:00 -0800

As we near the end of 2017 and head into the new year, it’s important to take time for reflection. Reflecting back on the past year will help you to refine and adjust your learning efforts so that you can effectively plan and set goals for the new year.

Continue reading this blog post on the Treehouse Blog.

Treehouse Blog: Learn Entity Framework at Treehouse

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 17:00:00 -0700

So you’ve mastered the basics of creating web pages and forms using Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC web framework. What do you do next? Time to learn how to leverage the power of databases in your web apps!

Continue reading this blog post on the Treehouse Blog.

Visual Studio 2017 Launch Event Videos Now Available On Demand

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 16:00:00 -0800

I presented two sessions this week as part of the live training for the Visual Studio 2017 Launch event. The videos for these sessions are now available on demand via Microsoft’s Channel 9.

My involvement in the Visual Studio 2017 Launch event came about through a partnership between Treehouse and Microsoft (specifically the .NET team). For more information about the event, see my post on the Treehouse blog.

Getting Started with ASP.NET Core in Visual Studio 2017

ASP.NET Core is an open-source (github.com/aspnet/home) and cross-platform framework for building modern web apps using .NET. It is a significant redesign of ASP.NET that is built from the ground up to provide an optimized development framework for apps that are either deployed to the cloud or run on-premises. You can develop and run your ASP.NET Core apps cross-platform on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

In this module, we’ll create a simple app using both the .NET Core command-line interface (CLI) and the latest tooling available in Visual Studio 2017. Along the way, we’ll also take a look at some of the key new concepts and features that are part of ASP.NET Core and how they compare to the ASP.NET that you know and love.

Exploring and Migrating to TypeScript

TypeScript is a statically typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. It can help you be more productive and write higher quality code. That’s all great, but migrating an existing JavaScript project to TypeScript can seem like a daunting proposition.

Luckily, benefiting from TypeScript doesn’t require you to migrate your entire project to TypeScript. You can benefit from TypeScript by making incremental changes to your project.

In this module, you’ll learn the basics of the TypeScript language and how to incrementally migrate a project to TypeScript. You’ll also see how Visual Studio 2017 leverages the TypeScript Language Service to provide a rich JavaScript development experience including features such as symbol-based navigation, statement completion, and code refactoring. And you’ll see how to use JSDoc comments and TypeScript Declaration (d.ts) files to refine the TypeScript Language Service’s understanding of your code.

Treehouse Blog: Treehouse Partners with Microsoft for the Release of Visual Studio 2017

Mon, 06 Mar 2017 16:00:00 -0800

On March 7th and 8th, Microsoft will host a special online event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Visual Studio and the release of Visual Studio 2017. Day one (3/7) will feature keynotes from Julia Liuson, Brian Harry, Miguel de Icaza, and Scott Hanselman along with interactive technical demo sessions with Microsoft engineers. Day two (3/8) will feature a full day of live interactive training organized into two tracks.

Treehouse is excited to partner with Microsoft to deliver two sessions as part of the Web Development with Visual Studio 2017 track on Wednesday March 8th (see below for more information).

Continue reading this blog post on the Treehouse Blog.

Treehouse Blog: 8 Ways to Get the Most Out of a Conference This Year

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 16:00:00 -0800

You’ve decided to attend a technical conference this year. You’ve reviewed the options and have selected the perfect conference for yourself. Congrats!

But it’s difficult to take time out of your schedule and money out of your budget to attend a technical conference. Even if your employer provides you with a learning budget, you’ll likely need to convince them of the value of sending you to the conference that you’re interested in attending.

Continue reading this blog post on the Treehouse Blog.