Software Development

Looking to start coding this year? Travis from Travis Media shares eight essential principles to set you up for success:

• Set a clear goal and timeline: Know what you’re aiming for—whether landing your first job or launching a project—and give yourself deadlines to stay motivated.
• Focus on fundamentals, not trends: Learn core concepts (like data structures, algorithms, debugging) before chasing the latest shiny frameworks.
• Build real projects: Apply what you learn by creating small apps, contributing to open-source, or freelancing to develop practical skills and a portfolio.
• Balance breadth and depth: Start broad to discover what you like, then go deep in one area (web, mobile, data, etc.) to stand out.
• Find a community: Join forums, Discord groups or local meetups for support, feedback, and valuable connections.
• Practice consistently: Daily or weekly coding beats binge sessions—small, steady progress is more effective.
• Embrace failure and feedback: Treat bugs and critiques as learning opportunities, not setbacks.
• Maintain long-term focus: Stay curious, keep learning, and plan for ongoing development beyond your first project or job.

These rules are concise, practical, and beginner‑friendly—packed with insight for anyone starting a coding journey today.

HTML6 Editor | Online Live WYSIWYG HTML Editor

This code removes HTML text nodes that have no non-whitespace content.

foreach (var node in document.DocumentNode
    .DescendantsAndSelf()
    .Where(n => n.NodeType == HtmlNodeType.Text && 
        string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(n.InnerText)).ToList())
{
    node.Remove();
}

DescendantsAndSelf() will include the root node in the search, which may be necessary depending on the requirements.
ToList() to create a separate list for removal, avoiding issues with modifying the collection while iterating

{
    "glossary": {
        "title": "example glossary",
		"GlossDiv": {
            "title": "S",
			"GlossList": {
                "GlossEntry": {
                    "ID": "SGML",
					"SortAs": "SGML",
					"GlossTerm": "Standard Generalized Markup Language",
					"Acronym": "SGML",
					"Abbrev": "ISO 8879:1986",
					"GlossDef": {
                        "para": "A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.",
						"GlossSeeAlso": ["GML", "XML"]
                    },
					"GlossSee": "markup"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Customers can now deterministically restrict their workflows to run on a specific set of runners using the names of their runner groups in the runs-on key of their workflow YAML. This prevents the unintended case where your job runs on a runner outside your intended group because the unintended runner shared the same labels as the runners in your intended runner group.
Example of the new syntax to ensure a runner is targeted from your intended runner group:

runs-on:
  group: my-group
  labels: [ self-hosted, label-1 ]

In addition to the workflow file syntax changes, there are also new validation checks for runner groups at the organization level. Organizations will no longer be able to create runner groups using a name that already exists at the enterprise level. A warning banner will display for any existing duplicate runner groups at the organization level. There's no restriction on the creation of runner groups at the enterprise level.
This feature change applies to enterprise plan customers as only enterprise plan customers are able to create runner groups.

Source: GitHub Actions: Restrict workflows to specific runners using runner group names

C# String.StartsWith() method determines whether this string instance starts with the specified character or string.

String.StartsWith(ch)
String.StartsWith(str)
String.StartsWith(str, ignoreCase, culture)
String.StartsWith(str, comparisonType)

• String.StartsWith Method (System) | Microsoft Learn

The JSON-LD Playground is a web-based JSON-LD viewer and debugger. If you are interested in learning JSON-LD, this tool will be of great help to you. Developers may also use the tool to debug, visualize, and share their JSON-LD markup.

JSON-LD Playground

Introduction

• Microsoft Dev Box documentation | Microsoft Docs

Build developer environments fast with Microsoft Dev Box

JSON Viewer - Free Tool to View and Edit JSON Code Online (jsononline.net)

JSON Parser - Convert JSON to Strings Online (jsononline.net)