Posts

Function Friday - Date and Time Wrap Up: Timezones and Ticks

This time I’m walking through the remaining Date and Time functions. These include the functions that convert between and work with timezones: convertFromUtc, convertToUtc, convertTimeZone, utcNow. But first, we’re going to take a look at ticks. Ticks Just what the heck are ticks, anyway? Ticks are an integer value that represents the total number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since January 1, 0001 at 12 am midnight, Universal time. These numbers can obviously get quite big. For example, the ticks value of September 9, 2022, at 10:00 AM UTC time is 637983144000000000.

Friday, September 9, 2022 | 4 minutes Read

Power Automate - Starting With A Template

Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Video: Power Automate - Starting with a Template

A new video this week. I delve into how quickly you can create a Power Automate flow using one of the thousands of provided templates. https://youtu.be/cjMJvRuHAsc

Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Azure Back to School 2022 - Saving Customer Relationships with Azure Cognitive Services

For those of you who missed it yesterday, you can catch one of my two Azure Back to School sessions below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUL7Iuac3bI&ab_channel=BarretCodes

Sunday, September 4, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Azure Back to School 2022 - Moving Massive Mountains Of Magnificent Data

Friday, September 2, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Azure Back To School 2022 - Saving Customer Relationships With Azure Cognitive Services

Friday, September 2, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Function Friday - More Date and Time Fun: startOf and dayOf

Previously I’ve walked through how to do some date math, formatting, and parsing. Now I’ll drill into a few of the other date and time functions around getting certain values related to a particular date and time. dayOf Functions There are three functions that are closely related: dayOfMonth, dayOfWeek, dayOfYear. All three function in the same manner. They return a numerical value that represents the particular DateTime’s value in reference to the current month, week, or year.

Friday, September 2, 2022 | 2 minutes Read

An Introduction To Databases

Something a little different this time around. Lately, both at work and in my personal projects and learnings, I’ve been dealing with a wide variety of databases. Databases in general are a core component in application infrastructure. Despite that, they get far less focus in the blogosphere than other topics like UI, UX, APIs, and the like. I get it. Databases aren’t sexy. They aren’t cool. They’re just the core that supports the entire application. Nothing important.

Tuesday, August 30, 2022 | 6 minutes Read

Microsoft Power Automate - Creating Our First Flow

power automate

Tuesday, August 23, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Video: Creating Our First Power Automate Flow

Another introduction video. This one covers an overview of creating a simple flow in Power Automate. https://youtu.be/AFUt1VoNMUc

Tuesday, August 23, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Function Friday - Formatting and Parsing Dates and Times

This week I’m looking at formatting and parsing date and time values in Power Automate. This can be a great pain when working with data in your functions for a straightforward reason: DateTime values come in many different formats. And different systems will require different formats for your DateTime values. And that’s before you even consider the pain of timezones. formatDateTime We’ll first look at formatting. The formatDateTime function takes a DateTime string and converts it into a different format. The pattern is as follows:

Friday, August 19, 2022 | 4 minutes Read

Is a College Degree Necessary To Find A Tech Job?

It used to be that having a college degree was a necessary thing to getting a job in software development. This was especially true at the “entry” level of the spectrum. Oftentimes it didn’t really matter much what that degree was in. It was just “required” that you have one. But is that still the case in 2022? Thankfully, in most cases, the answer is: No. Don’t get me wrong. Some companies still keep a stranglehold on doing things the way they’ve always done them. These companies are collectively known as dinosaurs. They live in the past and they are usually either very big, with a huge bureaucracy (i.e. HR department), or they are owned or run by someone who can’t let go of the past (i.e. an old dude who likes to start stories with “in my day…”). These are the same companies that are currently demanding that developers and engineers return to working onsite in the office, because “reasons”. And in today’s world, these are companies that are struggling to get and keep talent.

Tuesday, August 16, 2022 | 7 minutes Read