Startups and Founders • 10 min read

The Unbiased Questioning Framework – The Unbiased Founder #1

Avoid the validation trap by understanding why customers give false positives. This article introduces a 3-rule framework for unbiased questioning, teaching founders to focus on past behaviors and current problems instead of pitching their idea.

All Articles .NET (6) AI (11) Backend (7) Cloud (3) Databases (7) IoT (3) Kafka (2) Kubernetes (2) ML (0) Mobile development (2) Node.js (1) Sharepoint (2) Startups and Founders (1) Uncategorized (4) android (0) express (0) windows-8 (0)

Catching AI Regressions in CI/CD Before Your Users Notice – AI for Dummies #9

By Carlos Rodrigues

19 min read

Catching AI Regressions in CI/CD Before Your Users Notice – AI for Dummies #9

With new AI frameworks, model updates, and prompt engineering techniques dropping (almost) every single week, we get this constant feeling of being behind. (I do,… Continue readingCatching AI Regressions in CI/CD Before Your Users Notice – AI for Dummies #9

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Improving evals by teaching an LLM to Grade Another LLM – AI for Dummies #8

By Carlos Rodrigues

29 min read

Improving evals by teaching an LLM to Grade Another LLM – AI for Dummies #8

At the end of our first article on the AI Evals mini series we left a small elephant in the room: fuzzy matching works great… Continue readingImproving evals by teaching an LLM to Grade Another LLM – AI for Dummies #8

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Why deterministic tests are not enough in the world of AI: An Introduction to AI Evals – AI for Dummies #7

By Carlos Rodrigues

7 min read

Why deterministic tests are not enough in the world of AI: An Introduction to AI Evals – AI for Dummies #7

If you are a software engineer stepping into the world of LLMs and AI engineering, you have likely encountered this or a very similar frustrating… Continue readingWhy deterministic tests are not enough in the world of AI: An Introduction to AI Evals – AI for Dummies #7

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GraphRAG – how agents can leverage structured knowledge and stay on track: #AI for dummies #6

By Carlos Rodrigues

15 min read

GraphRAG – how agents can leverage structured knowledge and stay on track: #AI for dummies #6

This article compares standard vector RAG with GraphRAG, explaining when global synthesis and multi-hop reasoning justify higher ingestion cost and latency. It then builds a PostgreSQL proof of concept using pgvector and Apache AGE with Docker and a Python retrieval pipeline.

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By Carlos Rodrigues

6 min read

Target Encoding: AI for Dummies #5

At the end of our One Hot encoding article, we left a small elephant in the room: what happens when your categorical column has 50… Continue readingTarget Encoding: AI for Dummies #5

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Understanding backpropagation: AI for Dummies #4

By Carlos Rodrigues

3 min read

Understanding backpropagation: AI for Dummies #4

If you have spent any time in the machine learning space, you have inevitably scratched your head around the concept of backpropagation. It is the… Continue readingUnderstanding backpropagation: AI for Dummies #4

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By Carlos Rodrigues

6 min read

Feature Scaling: AI for Dummies #3

One of the things that may be bothering you if you followed #1 and #2 is the fact that we never talked about what happens… Continue readingFeature Scaling: AI for Dummies #3

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Handling Categorical Data with One-Hot Encoding: AI for Dummies #2

By Carlos Rodrigues

8 min read

Handling Categorical Data with One-Hot Encoding: AI for Dummies #2

If you’ve been following along with this series, you’ll know that in the first post we built a simple ML model to predict diabetes. We kept things… Continue readingHandling Categorical Data with One-Hot Encoding: AI for Dummies #2

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Using Agentic Workflows as Your Monitoring Platform

By Carlos Rodrigues

12 min read

Using Agentic Workflows as Your Monitoring Platform

Have you ever started your morning with an angry email from a user complaining that a key page on your app is throwing an error?… Continue readingUsing Agentic Workflows as Your Monitoring Platform

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Adding Vector Search to PostgreSQL with pgvector

By Carlos Rodrigues

6 min read

Adding Vector Search to PostgreSQL with pgvector

Everybody uses AI for almost everything these days. If you’ve been paying attention to the backend space recently, you’ve probably heard of RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)… Continue readingAdding Vector Search to PostgreSQL with pgvector

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Predicting Diabetes with Machine Learning – a brief introduction to Tensorflow: AI for Dummies #1

By Carlos Rodrigues

11 min read

Predicting Diabetes with Machine Learning – a brief introduction to Tensorflow: AI for Dummies #1

Everybody uses AI for almost everything these days. From helping shaping ideas to the recommendation systems that tells us which movie to watch next, it’s Continue readingPredicting Diabetes with Machine Learning – a brief introduction to Tensorflow: AI for Dummies #1

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Setting up Change Data Capture with Debezium and PostgreSQL

By Carlos Rodrigues

8 min read

Setting up Change Data Capture with Debezium and PostgreSQL

Event-driven systems have well-known advantages and most modern distributed system architectures leverage events to reduce latency, improve scalability, and overall, make everybody’s life a little Continue readingSetting up Change Data Capture with Debezium and PostgreSQL

Backend Read more

Configure Spotify’s backstage with Keycloak OiDC as Auth Provider

By Carlos Rodrigues

4 min read

Configure Spotify’s backstage with Keycloak OiDC as Auth Provider

Spotify’s backstage is a widely used developer portal framework. When properly configured, it is very powerful and integrates with dozens of other tools that are Continue readingConfigure Spotify’s backstage with Keycloak OiDC as Auth Provider

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Deploying Kafka to Kubernetes, reliably, securely with Strimzi- Kubernetes series #1

By Carlos Rodrigues

13 min read

Deploying Kafka to Kubernetes, reliably, securely with Strimzi- Kubernetes series #1

Apache Kafka has, over the past few years, become the go-to platform for building scalable, and fault-tolerant data pipelines and event-driven applications. Unlike other messaging… Continue readingDeploying Kafka to Kubernetes, reliably, securely with Strimzi- Kubernetes series #1

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Add authenticated nuget source and store its credentials

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

Add authenticated nuget source and store its credentials

Tired of Visual Studio prompting for the credentials of your Nuget Sources every time? This method uses the nuget.exe to add sources and store its Continue readingAdd authenticated nuget source and store its credentials

.NET Read more

Dealing with offline consumers without data loss using MQTT persistent sessions – MQTT Series #4

By Carlos Rodrigues

5 min read

Dealing with offline consumers without data loss using MQTT persistent sessions – MQTT Series #4

Hi and welcome to the 4th article on the MQTT series. Today we’ll see how to deal with fragile connections and how consumers can survive… Continue readingDealing with offline consumers without data loss using MQTT persistent sessions – MQTT Series #4

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Implementing the Worker Pattern / Competing Consumers Pattern with MQTT shared subscriptions – MQTT Series #3

By Carlos Rodrigues

8 min read

Implementing the Worker Pattern / Competing Consumers Pattern with MQTT shared subscriptions – MQTT Series #3

Hi and welcome to the 3rd article of the MQTT Series. In this article we’ll start looking into more advanced, yet very commonly found scenarios Continue readingImplementing the Worker Pattern / Competing Consumers Pattern with MQTT shared subscriptions – MQTT Series #3

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Setting up a secure Mosquitto MQTT Broker with SSL/TLS and User Access Control– MQTT series #2

By Carlos Rodrigues

18 min read

Setting up a secure Mosquitto MQTT Broker with SSL/TLS and User Access Control– MQTT series #2

Hi and welcome back to the MQTT series, where we’ll go from the protocol basics, to real-world implementations of different use cases, using different brokers Continue readingSetting up a secure Mosquitto MQTT Broker with SSL/TLS and User Access Control– MQTT series #2

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MAUI Blazor Hybrid – Fixing the “This project needs to be deployed before we can debug” error

By Carlos Rodrigues

2 min read

MAUI Blazor Hybrid – Fixing the “This project needs to be deployed before we can debug” error

MAUI Blazor Hybrid is a great way to leverage web development skills to target multiple platforms, including iOS and Android. As with most recent platforms,… Continue readingMAUI Blazor Hybrid – Fixing the “This project needs to be deployed before we can debug” error

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MQTT – The defacto IoT protocol – MQTT series #1

By Carlos Rodrigues

9 min read

MQTT – The defacto IoT protocol – MQTT series #1

Welcome to the first of a series of MQTT-related articles. In this series, we’ll cover different aspects of the MQTT protocol, from its low-level protocol Continue readingMQTT – The defacto IoT protocol – MQTT series #1

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VS Code and dotnet core: fixing ‘The terminal shell path “dotnet” is a directory’

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

VS Code and dotnet core: fixing ‘The terminal shell path “dotnet” is a directory’

I find myself using Linux more and more as my go-to OS, since I’m not developing anything windows specific most of the time. Occasionally I’d… Continue readingVS Code and dotnet core: fixing ‘The terminal shell path “dotnet” is a directory’

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How to open windows desktop applications from the browser

By Carlos Rodrigues

4 min read

How to open windows desktop applications from the browser

So, let’s say you’re working on a shiny new piece of software, which needs to somehow integrate with existing legacy software. The big problem is… Continue readingHow to open windows desktop applications from the browser

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PostgreSQL – which configurations require a service restart

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

PostgreSQL – which configurations require a service restart

Changing database configuration settings in a production environment is not (or should no bet) a common thing. Having similar staging or test environments helps ruling… Continue readingPostgreSQL – which configurations require a service restart

Databases Read more

By Carlos Rodrigues

2 min read

SEQUELIZE AND TYPESCRIPT

As many .NET developers transitioning to the world of Node, I started looking for an ORM. After some research, I found sequelize which seems widely adopted by the community. I’m using typescript, and I quickly found the way to define the model with sequelize a bit too verbose, and especially a duplication of the typescript class. That’s when I discovered sequelize-typescript, which provides this bridge, and leverages typescript’s typings, so mapping can be transparent if so we wish. All it takes is to extend a base Model class, and some annotations. Continue readingSEQUELIZE AND TYPESCRIPT

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By Carlos Rodrigues

5 min read

HOW I CLEARED THE AWS CSA-A WITH 95%

I’ve just cleared the AWS Cloud Solutions Architect – Associate exam with 95%, and this post contains a comprehensive list of the resources that helped getting there. Continue readingHOW I CLEARED THE AWS CSA-A WITH 95%

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[SQL SERVER] – CHECK RESTORE / BACKUP PROGRESS

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

[SQL SERVER] – CHECK RESTORE / BACKUP PROGRESS

Having to temporarily wear the DBA hat for a couple of days, I found myself backing up and restoring lots of databases, across different environments. Continue reading[SQL SERVER] – CHECK RESTORE / BACKUP PROGRESS

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By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

WHERE ARE SQL SERVER ERROR LOGS STORED?

Lately I had to provide the location of our SQL server error logs to an infra team, so they could be copied somewhere else. Raising a… Continue readingWHERE ARE SQL SERVER ERROR LOGS STORED?

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By Carlos Rodrigues

2 min read

[C#] EXTENDING ENUMS IN .NET

One of these days I had the need to create and extensible enum. Extensible in a way that allows people to add items to it,… Continue reading[C#] EXTENDING ENUMS IN .NET

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[JAVASCRIPT] – PARSING INTEGERS WITH TRAILING “0” WITH PARSEINT (IE9-11)

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

[JAVASCRIPT] – PARSING INTEGERS WITH TRAILING “0” WITH PARSEINT (IE9-11)

We are always learning, sometimes not the best way As most of the times, when I develop in JavaScript, I end up using the chrome… Continue reading[JAVASCRIPT] – PARSING INTEGERS WITH TRAILING “0” WITH PARSEINT (IE9-11)

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ADD A SECURITY TRIMMED NODE TO SHAREPOINT TOP BAR NAVIGATION

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

ADD A SECURITY TRIMMED NODE TO SHAREPOINT TOP BAR NAVIGATION

After programatically provisioning a new SPWeb object, it is sometimes necessary to create a new entry on the root web top bar menu.So far so… Continue readingADD A SECURITY TRIMMED NODE TO SHAREPOINT TOP BAR NAVIGATION

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[SHAREPOINT] HIDE QUICKLAUCH ON FEATURE ACTIVATION

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

[SHAREPOINT] HIDE QUICKLAUCH ON FEATURE ACTIVATION

Sometimes, when applying branding to Sharepoint sites, it’s necessary to hide the quicklaunch bar. Some people do that by overriding the css styles, and basically… Continue reading[SHAREPOINT] HIDE QUICKLAUCH ON FEATURE ACTIVATION

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[SQL SERVER] – GENERATE RANDOM DATETIME WITHIN A RANGE

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

[SQL SERVER] – GENERATE RANDOM DATETIME WITHIN A RANGE

One of these days I had the need to obtain a random datetime inside a specified range, on SQL Server 2008+. After a few minutes… Continue reading[SQL SERVER] – GENERATE RANDOM DATETIME WITHIN A RANGE

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UPDATING THE UI FROM A BACKGROUND THREAD ON ANDROID

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

UPDATING THE UI FROM A BACKGROUND THREAD ON ANDROID

Whenever it’s needed to perform some heavy/slow task on a mobile application, it’s a good practice to perform that specific operation on the background, using… Continue readingUPDATING THE UI FROM A BACKGROUND THREAD ON ANDROID

Mobile development Read more

By Carlos Rodrigues

2 min read

USING AN ENUM ON A FLUENTNHIBERNATE MAPPING [C#]

I recently needed to map a C# class to a database table using FluentNHibernate. So far so good…. But then I got stuck as one… Continue readingUSING AN ENUM ON A FLUENTNHIBERNATE MAPPING [C#]

.NET Read more

By Carlos Rodrigues

1 min read

“TRY-CATCH-FINALLY” EQUIVALENT IN RUBY

For those like me who are entering the ruby world but have programming experience with other languages, it can be hard to get things done,… Continue reading“TRY-CATCH-FINALLY” EQUIVALENT IN RUBY

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