Nick Cosentino | Simplifying software engineering concepts for you | Principal Software Engineering Manager @Microsoft | Creator of @BrandGhostAI 👻
Seattle, WA
Joined January 2023
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- Following1.1K
- Followers6.3K
- Likes11.8K
How To Delete Documents From MongoDB In C# — What You Need To Know
Read it on Medium:
stories.devleader.ca/how-to-…
Most people avoid tough conversations.
But if you want career growth? You can't.
Radical candor -- being clear, honest, and compassionate -- is not easy. Quite the opposite.
It takes:
- Trust
- Consistency
- The willingness to face discomfort
Without that, you're left with vague feedback and defensive reactions. That doesn't help anyone grow.
"Keep doing what you're doing."
To level up:
- Build strong relationships
- Focus on helping, not criticizing
- Practice giving timely and specific feedback
Career growth happens faster when you're willing to hear and deliver what needs to be said.
When's the last time you got honest feedback? Better yet, when's the last time you GAVE it?
📌 Have you been tuning into my AMA live-streams I do EVERY Monday at 7:00 PM PST?
Each stream I focus on:
- Reviewing my most recent newsletter
- Providing my perspective on spicy Reddit posts related to software development
- And most importantly... ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS!
👇 Let me know what you want me to answer in my next stream! 👇
Weather systems, item rarity beams... Making some progress.
Actively working on:
- Generated equipment models working on a rigged character... No idea how to guide the agent to do this properly, so I am having one agent look at the results, explain why it's terrible and what to do about it, and then having the other agent follow that advice. "Make no mistakes."
- More natural placement of environment/scenery on the tactical maps so it's not a forest from a grid of identical trees.
I'll likely start getting my @MacerusRPG account automated via @claudeai to post via @BrandGhostAI the status updates it makes as it's working through the day.
Okay, I am going with the god-mode upgrade here by switching over to @tripo3d_ai.
And now I have endless content to start putting out on YouTube because I can show this game come to life because I will actually have assets.
I can't believe this.
Are you looking to kickstart your software engineering journey?
Every weekend I publish a FREE newsletter discussing software engineering and dotnet topics.
Each newsletter issue discusses general software engineering topics to provide you with new and fresh perspectives on things.
This extends just beyond how to write code so that you're better equipped for your professional role.
Each issue discusses:
- 🧠 An exclusive article about a software engineering topic
- 💻 Code snippets and code examples in C# and dotnet for you to work with
- 🤯 An early access YouTube video and first-to-hear about exciting opportunities
- 📽 Review of content shared throughout the week
All for free.
----
🔔 Follow for more software engineering and dotnet topics!
🗣️ Share with your network!
📌 Check out my channel for FREE learning resources on C#, dotnet, and software engineering in general:
youtube.com/@devleader
📌 📌 If you enjoy my content, consider subscribing to my newsletter:
weekly.devleader.ca
It's free and I have something for all levels of software engineers to help you out on your development journey.
Join thousands of other readers every weekend!
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I use both unit tests and functional/integration tests as tools in my development
I like both approaches. I use both approaches. They're separate tools for separate situations in my development process.
I know from many conversations (especially online where we have plenty of strong opinions) that people seem to gravitate to one or the other.
Unit tests are too brittle. They don't offer value. You can't refactor code with them.
Functional tests are too much work to setup. They're too complicated. They aren't granular enough to catch issues in a helpful way.
Instead of focusing on all of the reasons why not... Try thinking about situations where these can be helpful tools.
Watch the full video here:
youtube.com/watch?v=6so35iZN…
Are Desktop Apps... Dead?! - Principal Engineering Manager AMA nitter.cf/i/broadcasts/2YRnqYzap…
📌 Check out the newsletter here:
weekly.devleader.ca
3 Undervalued Software Engineering Skills to Master
There are many software engineering skills that aren't just mastering leetcode. In fact, many of them aren't specifically technical software engineering skills! Here are 3 undervalued skills that you probably never even consider when it comes to software engineering!
Watch here:
bgh.st/23098a
You might not know of some of these tricks when downloading files in C#...
When we download files in C#, using an HttpClient will have default behavior that we stream the entire contents of the file into memory.
Depending on what you're trying to do, pulling in a big file into memory could be disastrous.
I put together a series of videos that walk through different thoughts for downloading files in C#.
Best of all? We can avoid pulling the whole thing into memory.
Even more bestest of all? I have benchmarks to prove it.
Check out these videos:
- Header Property Selection: youtu.be/PAXDf6j9rZQ
- Making a File Downloader Class: youtu.be/KPYVdRdY1k4
- Benchmarks: youtu.be/QfVHmj1r8Lo
Remember: The Internet has TONS of awesome cat videos, and if you can't store them all on your hard drive... You can bet that they aren't going to fit into memory either.
Avoid allocating more than you need to! Do it for the cats.
#csharp #dotnet #tutorial #coding
Use Claude Code Hooks for Targeted .NET Verification
Understand Claude Code hooks for targeted .NET verification, with actual event schemas, stdin handling, exit behavior, selective checks, and clear CI limits.
Read the article here:
bgh.st/gasry6
Delegates in C#: Action, Func, and Multicast Call Contracts
Learn delegates in C# with complete Action, Func, and multicast examples, including compatible methods, captured targets, return values, and exceptions.
Read the article here:
bgh.st/dt5lmj
I use both unit tests and functional/integration tests as tools in my development
I like both approaches. I use both approaches. They're separate tools for separate situations in my development process.
I know from many conversations (especially online where we have plenty of strong opinions) that people seem to gravitate to one or the other.
Unit tests are too brittle. They don't offer value. You can't refactor code with them.
Functional tests are too much work to setup. They're too complicated. They aren't granular enough to catch issues in a helpful way.
Instead of focusing on all of the reasons why not... Try thinking about situations where these can be helpful tools.
Watch the full video here:
youtube.com/watch?v=6so35iZN…
AI kicked my butt on this one. And while I'm a bit embarrassed for wasting time, it was a good lesson.
I had been stuck debugging a production problem for a full two days. No matter what I tried, I couldn't seem to narrow things down.
The break in production *SEEMED* to be related to my change, but when running things locally, of course...
It worked. It always "works on my machine" though, right?
I worked bottom up from the call stack.
I worked top down through he call stack.
I tried writing out true and false facts to narrow things down further.
Nothing.
I enlisted the help of my best GPT friend. But STILL no luck:
- Directly in ChatGPT... But maybe there wasn't enough context?
- Directly in Visual Studio... But surely it has enough context?
I was feeling hopeless. But then it dawned upon me:
If it WAS related to my most recent change, the answer is in the git diff. I had been staring at it on and off over those two days, but I didn't touch the code paths I suspected were causing an issue.
git diff CommitHashA CommitHashB > diff.txt
Here was some extra context to help my AI assistant. I asked it to find the root cause of the problem given all of the symptoms I had explained prior AND using the diff file.
Within seconds, it pointed out that I had also touched some dependency injection code. That dependency injection code happened to share references when it shouldn't.
Whoops.
I remember copying that from somewhere else in my code, so I now fixed one bug AND another one that was lurking and waiting to surface.
It's not that the AI invented some revolutionary solution -- it just did what I should have been doing, but I developed a blind spot for.
What's your most recent AI development hack or productivity booster?
📌 Check out my channel for FREE learning resources on C#, dotnet, and software engineering in general:
youtube.com/@devleader
C# Testcontainers for MongoDB: How To Easily Run Local Databases
Read it on Medium:
stories.devleader.ca/c-testc…
