I love writing code in VS Code on my MacBook Pro. VS Code has a ton of shortcuts that let me keep my fingers on the keyboard and fly around, coding. Recently I purchased the new MacBook Pro with the touchbar, which has raised a new hurdle ... how do I use the function keys? These are helpful for refactoring shortcuts in VS Code. I could map these features to other keys, but there is an easy way to show the FN keys to the touchbar when in VS Code on a Mac. Open System Preferences and find the Keyboard. Then select the Shortcuts tab. On the left, select Function Keys and click the Plus sign ( + ). This will open the Applications...

My Angular First Look course is now updated for v4.0.0+ and available on Pluralsight. The course is titled "Angular 2 First Look" but it covers the latest in v4 ( course titles are not updatable). This course is a gentle introduction to the changes that Angular (v4) brings, how they compare to AngularJS (v1), and provides an understanding of the architecture and how the core concepts work together to build applications. The name Angular refers to anything version 2.0.0 or greater. AngularJS refers to version 1. In this course, you will learn how your AngularJS skills translate and prepare you to build Angular (v4) applications. Code samples focus on specific features including Angular components, templates directives, data...

Lately, I've been hooked on Azure Functions, which are incredibly easy to get started to create some of your own APIs. One thing I love about editors is their ability to look up language syntax and JSON schemas to provide features like intellisense. I recently posted about how to add JSON schemas to a VS Code settings.json file to add intellisense for Azure Functions. After a short chat with my colleagues, I decided to create an extension that makes it even easier. You can find the extension Azure Functions Tools here in the marketplace. Cleanup If you followed my previous post, remove the JSON schema setting from your settings.json file Installation Steps Launch VS Code Quick Open ⌘+P...

I build a lot of Angular apps. They all need data, and often I find myself building a Node server to host my API calls and serve my data. There is a lot of ceremony in setting up a web API, which is one reason why I have been interested in serverless functions. Enter Azure Functions, which are incredibly easy to get started to create some of your own APIs. I'll be posting more about Angular apps and Azure Functions and my experiences with them, including some quickstarts. Configuring Azure Functions can be configured a few ways. One of the most flexible is to use JSON files. When I set up an Azure Function, there are two key configuration files...

I'm excited to be embarking on a new adventure as a Cloud Developer Advocate in the Cloud and Enterprise group at Microsoft. Here are the highlights of this post: I accepted a role as a Cloud Developer Advocate with Microsoft in the legendary Scott Guthrie's org I'll be working for an awesome tech leader, Jeff Sandquist (leading the recent docs.microsoft.com re-imagining, and web experiences) I'm working remote (aka happy family) I'll continue to be very engaged in the Angular/Node/JavaScript communities I'll continue to speak at events like ngConf, workshops, creating learning materials, samples, blog posts, and engaging with the community. I'll be using these technologies on their own and making them do awesome things in Azure...