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Development Process
Articles filed under Development Process
Articles
Showing 1–74 of 74
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Optimizing the Unconstrained
Levent observes that viral AI coding demos are impressive because they optimize unconstrained tasks, not because they solve real software engineering. In practice, software is defined by constraints—performance, compatibility, maintenance, security, and architecture—and those are rarely present in vague prompts. He contends that prompting has become a new programming language, but one that only works well when it encodes expert judgment. Real value comes from making constraints explicit and keeping humans in the loop.
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It’s Complicated
Software development is complicated. Mike talks about dealing with complexity on teams, and how teams can work together better to manage those giant piles of new ideas with catchy names.
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Eliminating Waste During Designer-to-Developer Handoff
Updated
Improve how teams move from front-end UI/UX experience created for users, to the developers who will write code to make it work. Create clear specs, usability testing, use low-code to design and improve collaboration and communication. If you’ve ever been part of a development team, you’ve experienced the disconnection that designers sometimes seem to have from how things get built. Jason shows how to make it better.
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Migrating Monolithic Apps to Multi-Platform Product Lines with .NET 5
Learn to migrate older applications to .NET 5. Learn to use "ports-and-adapters" (hexogonal architecture) along with design patterns and principles from domain-driven design (DDD) to help you modify your old software so you can split the business logic into independent assemblies.
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Rodman Visits the World of FX on Hulu’s “Devs”
Updated
Rod writes the editorial of his life after visiting Earling Studios in the UK where they filmed the TV series Devs in 2019. In Jan 2020, interviewed Alex Garland, the creator-writer-director of Devs.
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A Design Pattern for Building WPF Business Applications: Part 3
In the third installment of his WPF series, Paul shows you how to get feedback using an Entity Framework entity class. He also shows you how to start expanding user activities, like adding, editing, or deleting screens.
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A Professional-Grade Configuration for Azure DevOps Services: Beyond the Quickstarts
Jeffrey shows you how to organize your code to suit DevOps, configure the five Azure DevOps products, automate your pipeline for speed, and build quality into each stage of your process.
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A Good Idea is Just the Start
Updated
If you ever thought you’d like to develop the Next Big Thing, you’ll need Q’s advice about how to get started and what to do before you start writing code.
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration might seem like a lot of cooks stirring the same pot, but Geoff shows us how it’s more like a community of mentors.
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Microsoft Teams: The Developer Story
If you were wondering how to make sure that your team communicates well, you’ll want to follow along closely as Sahil makes a bot using Microsoft Teams.
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What’s New in CODE Framework in 2016
ByMarkus Egger
CODE Magazine · 2016 - September/October · Addison Wesley Books · Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce
Updated
If you’d like a neat summary of the many interesting and useful changes in CODE Magazine’s free development framework, you’ve come to the right place. Markus talks about themes, input validation, security, and binding, Web API service hosting, calling REST services, and interacting with the community and GitHub.
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Why F#
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Rachel Reese argues that F# is a functional-first, .NET-friendly language that enables concise, readable code and safer, more expressive solutions by leveraging features like powerful type inference, discriminated unions with pattern matching, option types, units of measure, a REPL, and unique type providers—allowing developers to prototype quickly, interoperate with existing .NET libraries, reduce bugs, and accomplish complex data-driven tasks with far less boilerplate than C#.
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DevOps and Continuous Delivery: Made for a Cloud World
Jeffrey gives us an overview and demonstration of a continuous delivery environment and shows us some great tools along the way. Using integrated development and operations, he gets the most out of cloud technologies.
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Write Cross-Platform Apps using Electron
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Using this new tool and a few familiar ones, Sahil shows us how to build a simple app that we can sell on Apple or Windows App Stores.
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Challenges, Pains, and Points of Today’s Software Development
Although some of us write code for the pure joy of it, Dino invites us to think about mobility and the cloud to make apps reflect the world we live in.
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XAML Anti-Patterns: Resource Overuse
In the second article of the series, Markus talks about keeping your code readable and maintainable by controlling how often and where you reuse objects.
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The Software Comedy: State of the Art
Dino has a somewhat literary take on the things that go wrong in software development. You’ll follow him through the seven rings of Software Hell in a parallel to Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”
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10 Good Practices for ASP.NET MVC Apps
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Dino talks about the best possible layout for your project in MVC 5, and gives some great tips for helping you keep it all organized and effi cient.
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Tips and Tricks for Flexible Code
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If you want to develop code that’s flexible, extensible, maintainable, and testable, you’ll want to read Paul’s article about some basic things to keep in mind before you start.
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Angular JavaScript Jumpstart
Have you ever wondered how to use your browser (and those of your customers) as rich clients without plug-ins or ActiveX objects? Shawn Wildermuth tells you how.
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Why Your App’s UX is More Important than You Think
Updated
Have you ever found a great app idea but struggled to use it? Q explains some basic steps you can follow to be sure that your creation doesn’t get put in the pile of unused apps.
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Creating Collections of Entity Objects
Updated
Almost every programmer knows (unless you have been living under a rock for the last five years or so) that you should be using classes for all of your programming. You should also be using collections of objects instead of using a Data Reader, a DataSet, or a DataTable in your applications. The reasons for using collections are many and are explored in this article.
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Behavior-Driven Development Using SpecFlow
As software development becomes complicated, writing unit tests provides a protection against constant changes and modifications. Traditionally, unit tests were written by testing each piece of the application layer in isolation. With the advent of behavior-driven development, now our unit tests can be composed into user defined stories. Each story represents a single feature of the application which can be tested from end to end. This method makes sure that the unit test only passes when the story is completely done. In this article I’ll show you how to use SpecFlow and WatiN to write BDD-style tests to implement user stories.
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Introducing Queues and Topics in Azure Service Bus
In 2007, Microsoft unveiled a new vision called “Software + Services” that would fundamentally change the way that both Microsoft and their customers build software and have a gradual, yet marked ripple effect throughout the software giant’s entire strategy.
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The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Transact SQL Programming Tips
Kevin Goff presents a practical “Baker’s Dozen” of T‑SQL tips and gotchas for SQL Server developers and BI practitioners, illustrating real-world solutions—allocation and data‑type pitfalls, MERGE usage, computing medians and percentiles, inspecting snapshots, identity vs GUID tradeoffs, substring vs LIKE performance, correct aggregation across one‑to‑many joins, dynamic PIVOT, outer‑join filtering, IDENTITY_INSERT, rollback of TRUNCATE within transactions, building a Date dimension, and using GROUPING SETS—to improve correctness, performance, and maintainability in T‑SQL code.
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Git for Subversion Users
Updated
Git has some similarities to Subversion, but it’s in the differences that Git shines. Derick looks at some of the features that Git provides, for which Subversion has no equivalent.
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Anti-Patterns: TED (Test-Eventually Development)
Software developers are good at writing applications. Testers are good at testing applications. In the software development world where separation of concerns is a never-ending quest, it seems logical to apply the rule to the software development cycle. “Let the developers code; QA can be responsible for making sure it works.” It provides an object-oriented management approach where each team is responsible only for what they are best at, and the two teams interface through one simple property, each: the result of their logic and expertise. The system is of logical design. It appears to be a logical pattern. Or so it seems.
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Super Productivity: Using WPF and Silverlight’s Automatic Layout Features in Business Applications
ByVFP Conversion Papers · Markus Egger Talks Tech · CODE Magazine · 2010 - November/December
Updated
In this article, Markus Egger demonstrates how to leverage WPF and Silverlight’s automatic layout features to create business application user interfaces that are faster to develop, more reusable, maintainable, and less error-prone than traditional approaches. By shifting layout responsibilities to stylable, layout-agnostic containers and creating custom layout panels, Egger shows how developers can separate UI structure from presentation, enabling rapid UI creation and easy adaptation across devices and platforms. He also introduces an action-based command model integrated into the layout, emphasizing how these techniques together enhance productivity and flexibility in real-world enterprise UI development.
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Building .NET Systems with Ruby, Rake and Albacore
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Automated build tools have been around for a long time.Many of the early tools were simple batch scripts that made calls out to other command-line tools like compilers and linkers. As the need for more and more complexity in the build scripts was realized, specialized tools like Make were introduced. These tools offered more than just sequential processing of commands. They provided some logic and decision making as well as coordination of the various parts of the build process. Since Make was first introduced, many variations and specialized versions have been introduced for various languages and platforms. Rake - the “Ruby Make” system - may not have much more than its namesake to claim a connection to Make, but it is a build tool that is quickly growing in popularity and providing .NET developers with new options.
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Introducing Advanced Code Contracts with the Entity Framework and Pex
Martin introduces Design by Contract and Code Contracts, and gives you a sneak preview of Pex—Microsoft’s new test-suite generator. Along the way, he will show you how to add contracts to ADO.NET entities and some interesting coding strategies, good practices, and pitfalls you may encounter while making a deal with your code.With Code Contracts, Microsoft delivers its own flavor of Design by Contract for the .NET Framework. But wait, what is this thing sometimes called Contract-First Development? How will it change the way you develop software and write your unit tests? And first and foremost, how do you use Code Contracts efficiently?In this article, I will introduce Design by Contract and Code Contracts, as well as give you a sneak preview of Pex-Microsoft’s new test-suite generator. Along the way, I will show you how to add contracts to ADO.NET entities and some interesting coding strategies, good practices, and pitfalls you may encounter while making a deal with your code.
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Post Mortem Web Project
First Premier Bankcard (www.firstpremier.com) is the 10th largest issuer of Visa and MasterCard credit cards in the United States.First Premier employs multiple thousands of people spread across the state of South Dakota. A major percentage of the employees at First Premier work in call-center operations helping people apply for credit cards.
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S.O.L.I.D. Software Development, One Step at a Time
Derick outlines how to achieve the benefits of low coupling, high cohesion, and strong encapsulation. He also shows how the five S.O.L.I.D. design principles can get you there.Most professional software developers understand the academic definitions of coupling, cohesion, and encapsulation.However, many developers do not understand how to achieve the benefits of low coupling, high cohesion and strong encapsulation, as outlined in this article. Fortunately, others have created stepping stones that lead to these goals, resulting in software that is easier to read, easier to understand and easier to change. In this article series, I will define three of the primary object-oriented principles and show how to reach them through the five S.O.L.I.D. design principles.
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Successful Software Development
Updated
Software development is a lot more than just writing lines of code.You need to think about project management, prototyping, database design, software architecture, framework usage and a whole host of other factors. In this article you will learn one approach to developing software applications from start to finish.This approach has been used successfully to develop hundreds of applications by a software development company that has been around since 1991.
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MVP Corner: Good Contracts or Good Friends
Nov/Dec 2008 MVP Corner by Juilia Lerman
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Behavior-Driven Development
Updated
Extreme Programming and Scrum compliment each other, but they weren’t made from the start to fit together hand in glove.Practicing Extreme Programming and Scrum are more effective when practiced together, and even more effective when practiced together as Behavior-Driven Development.
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Individuagility
Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo argues that individuals seeking to adopt agile development must first unlearn entrenched bad habits with humility and embrace just-in-time learning, then incrementally and iteratively blend new techniques into existing practice. He offers a pragmatic, stepwise approach—from reading The Pragmatic Programmer and securing source control to implementing continuous integration, automated testing, refactoring, and design-pattern knowledge—culminating in interface-based programming and test-driven development, supported by lifelong learning. The goal is sustainable skill growth and genuine practitioner mastery, not a rushed, brittle transition.
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Managing an Agile Software Project
Everything right or wrong with a software project is management’s fault.Either management staffed the right people or the wrong people. Management was absent or involved. Management is hard, and there are numerous factors that can cause success or failure of a project. In the best situation you have great people who do great work. A software manager can even succeed despite themselves if they happen to staff a top-notch team even though the managers, themselves, might not be very competent. The success that a top-notch team achieves is still the manager’s fault. Failure, however, is harder to blame on the team because a manager must be able to solve problems as they come along. This article will focus on tips and knowledge to use when managing an agile software project.
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Using Continuous Integration to Reduce Project Friction
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So you wanna be agile, do you?You want to work in small increments and continuously deliver business functionality. You want to embrace change, even if that means taking on new requirements late in the game. But wait, won’t that be dangerous? It doesn’t have to be if you’ve got a solid Continuous Integration infrastructure in place.
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It’s an Agile World
Jan/Feb 08 Editorial by Rod Paddock
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The Data Dude Meets Team Build
“Integrate the data tier developer in to the core development life cycle and process.”That is one of the main objectives of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, also known under its project name “Data Dude”. Bringing the data tier developer into Visual Studio is the first step in enabling closer integration between the application and data tier developer. Having both environments leverage the same Team Foundation Build (Team Build) system enables daily and automatic integration of changes into the build process, enforcing closer integration and shorter feedback cycles between the two originally disjoint disciplines.
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Coders Anonymous?
Have you ever spent hours and hours trying to figure out one little bug? Stayed up all night trying to work out a sweet piece of code? Gotten totally lost in trying to see how some new developer technology works?
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MVP Corner: Do You have a Heart Disease?
Updated
Most people who undergo bypass surgery-are back for another one in just a few years-unless they die first of course.
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Exploring Tablet PC Application Deployment
You have decided to take the plunge and create a Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition operating system-aware application. This decision comes with a new set of requirements when it comes to enabling Tablet PC-specific features and deployment of your application. This article will take you through the process of creating a Tablet PC-aware application and deploying it in the enterprise.
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The Proper Developer Environments for Mobile PC, Tablet PC, and Ultra-Mobile PC Applications
When Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition appeared in 2002, developers were sometimes confused about whether to write code on a Tablet PC or if it were possible to develop Tablet PC applications on existing desktop computers.The solution turned out to be fairly straightforward, if less than intuitive. However, with the addition of Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs), multiple releases of the Tablet and Touch Technology API, and now the Windows Vista™ operating system, this question arises again: What do you need to do to set up your developer environment and create applications for these form factors?
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101 Windows Phone 7 Apps, Volume I: Developing Apps 1-50- Chapter 2 Flashlight -
This excerpt is from the new book, ‘101 Windows Phone 7 Apps, Volume I: Developing Apps 1-50’, authored by Adam Nathan, published April 2011, ISBN 0672335522, Copyright 2011. For more info, please visit the publisher site http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0672335522
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Advanced .NET Debugging
Mario Hewardt takes a look at the internals of the CLR heap manager and the GC and some common pitfalls that can wreak havoc in your application.He shows how to utilize the debuggers and a set of other tools to illustrate how to get to the bottom of the problems.
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Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, 2nd Edition, Chapter 4
**Publisher Copyright Disclaimer:" This excerpt is from the new 2nd Ed. of: Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, authored by Jim Highsmith, published by Addison-Wesley Professional, July 2009, ISBN 0321658396, Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. For more info, please visit www.informit.com/title/0321658396
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C# 5.0 UNLEASHED - CHAPTER 3 - Getting Started with .NET Development Using C#
C# 5.0 Unleashed By Bart De Smet Published Apr 22, 2013 by Sams. Part of the Unleashed series. Copyright 2013. To purchase book click here: http://www.informit.com/store/c-sharp-5.0-unleashed-9780672336904
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Chapter 2: The Case for Manual Testing
The origin of software bugs begins with the very origin of software development itself. It’s clearly not the case that we started out with perfect software and invented ways to screw it up.(1) Indeed, the term bug has been in common use within software development from the inception of the discipline(2) and is a nomenclature that is used today in every office, garage, dorm room, data center, laboratory, bedroom, cafe, and every other place where software is developed. The first software had bugs, the latest software has bugs, and so have all the bits and bytes in between. Software is not, and likely never will be, bug free.
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Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition - Chapter 2
“This book excerpt is from Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition, authored by Lyssa Adkins, published by Pearson/Addison-Wesley Professional, May 2010, ISBN 0321637704, Copyright 2010 Pearson Education Inc. For a full Table of Contents: www.informit.com/title/0321637704”
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First Sketches of an App: Planning the Design of a Mobile Application
You won't need a hammer or a screwdriver; maybe you'll need a tape measure—though preferably one in digital form on the top and side of your computer screen. Like any job, there's an established set of tools that most interaction and interface designers use to create their projects. Programs such as Photoshop, Balsamiq, xScope, and others are critical components of the interface-building process. In this chapter you'll find a general strategic outlay for planning the design of a mobile application. Using the steps and techniques presented, you'll be prepared for the different phases a design evolves through during its infancy, before a programmer writes the first lines of code.
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Introduction
-- “This excerpt is from the book, ‘Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods That Work in the Real World’, by Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs, published by Pearson/Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN 0321685865, Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. For a full Table of Contents please visit www.informit.com/title/0321685865”
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Introduction to Key Principles
Disclaimer:“This chapter is an excerpt from the book, Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility, authored by Pollyanna Pixton, Niel Nickolaisen, Todd Little and Kent McDonald, published by Addison-Wesley Professional, June 2009, ISBN 0321572882 Copyright 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. For more info, please visit the publisher site: www.informit.com/title/0321572882 Safari Books Online subscribers can access the book here: http://safari.informit.com/9780321617064
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JavaScript Succinctly by Cody Lindely Chapter 9 The Head/Global Object
JavaScript Succinctly by Cody Lindley is a concise, yet thorough examination of JavaScript objects and their supporting nuances, such as primitive values, scope, inheritance, the head object, and more. It is intended for intermerdiate JavaScript developers looking to solidify their understanding of the language, and those who have only worked with JavaScript under the mantle of libraries (such as jQuery, Prototype, etc.). The following excerpt discusses managing the scope of variables and properties. This book can be downloaded for free from Syncfusion's Technology Resource Portal. To download the ebook go here: http://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks/javascript?utm_medium=BizDev-CodeMag0813
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Sams Teach Yourself: HTML5 Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours
By Jennifer Kyrnin Published Aug 22, 2013 by Sams. Part of the Sams Teach Yourself series.
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Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and javaScript UNLEASHED - Chapter 1
In <i>Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript Unleashed</i>, author Stephen Walther covers everything you need to build, test, and distribute outstanding Windows 8 software with JavaScript and HTML5. Walther clearly demonstrates the unique advantages Windows 8 offers to web developers. He guides you through using Microsoft’s new WinJS library to develop apps for Microsoft’s brand-new version of Windows--you learn how to use JavaScript templates, controls, and data binding. You’ll find in-depth coverage of everything from displaying data with a ListView control to supporting SkyDrive cloud storage, creating games to using IndexedDB and HTML5 forms.
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Windows Phone 8 Development Succinctly
Windows Phone 8 Development Succinctly by Matteo Pagani is one of the latest titles in Syncfusion's acclaimed Succinctly series of technical e-books. It introduces the platform and many of its features to get new developers up and running with their own Windows Phone applications. Go from displaying a simple "Hello World" message to creating an app thoroughly integrated with the operating system and hardware to to deliver a unique user experience. This book can be downloaded in its entirety for free from Syncfusion's Technology Resource Portal.
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Having Fun with Code Snippets
Using code snippets can make it quick to add common code pieces to your application. Creating your own snippets allows you to create a library of custom code pieces and share them with other developers.
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eXtreme.NET Iteration One: Refactoring with Resharper
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In my book “eXtreme .NET” I introduce a team of developers who are learning how to improve their ability to deliver great software. They’re learn how to use XP (eXtreme Programming) techniques to improve the way they deliver software. In this article, we’ll continue to follow this team as they learn about Resharper, a tool they are considering using to help with refactoring their code.
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eXtreme .NET
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Learn how to use XP (eXtreme Programming) techniques to improve the way you deliver softwareIn my book, "eXtreme .NET," I introduce a team of developers who are learning how to improve their ability to deliver great software. In this article, you'll follow this team as they learn about a new tool to help them develop software solutions using the .NET Framework. The tool they are going to explore is called Cruise Control and it helps the team continuously integrate their code.
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Unit Testing in .NET
You have been given the task of creating some business objects for a new .NET project.The UI has not been created (or designed) yet, so you start coding right away. After creating the first few objects, you decide that maybe you should do some unit testing. How?
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Unit Testing Overview
Utilize unit testing in your Visual Studio .NET development. Automated unit testing enables a team to exercise its entire code base against a battery of tests. This facilitates a quick, reactive environment by providing instant feedback during development. Changes to the code will be tested for validity and any errors will become apparent. Your code will become simpler and you will have great example documentation for using your code.
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Make, Buy, or Lease: the Software Acquisition Dilemma
Malcolm Rubel contends that the current software acquisition landscape for mission-critical systems favors custom development over off-the-shelf or leased solutions, due to advances in modeling tools, IDEs, and modular architectures. The article argues that custom software best matches a company’s processes (suitability), scales with growth (scalability), remains adaptable (flexibility), interoperates with other systems, and ultimately yields more favorable total ownership costs, despite higher upfront investments. Rubel emphasizes evaluating qualitative factors—rather than ROI alone—to decide among make, buy, or lease, and highlights the strategic value of ownership and control in customization.
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The Importance of a ModernDevelopment Approach
Markus Egger argues that software development has moved from monolithic, single-tool, desktop apps to distributed, service-oriented architectures where data flows seamlessly across boundaries. Through the rise of web interfaces, XML, and COM-based middle tiers, applications must be properly designed up front to avoid fragile, brittle systems. He asserts that Windows DNA 2000 marks a pivotal leap, dissolving borders between Windows and Web, and aligning software architecture with business needs by making data and logic available as reusable components across the enterprise. Egger is enthusiastic about this modern development approach.
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Collaborative Development Part 1 - Source Control
Lauren Clarke argues that effective collaborative software development—especially for distributed teams—requires robust source control: she explains core versioning concepts, practical benefits (rollback, diffs, branching, sharing, deployment), and gives a how-to for Visual SourceSafe while evaluating SourceGear’s SOS Collab for remote access and integrated project tools, concluding that adopting automated version control is indispensable for team productivity and reliability.
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Introduction to Gathering Requirements and Creating Use Cases
Updated
Ellen Whitney argues that rigorous requirements gathering and well-written Use Cases are essential to prevent costly defects and miscommunication in software projects; she details types and qualities of requirements, practical techniques (cards, lists, templates, collaboration tools), and how to turn requirements into clear, actor-driven Use Cases and diagrams to guide design, improve estimates, and produce maintainable, scalable systems.
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Customers vs. Code: Customer Relationships
Nancy Folsom argues that successful software projects hinge on strong customer relationships, not technical prowess alone. She reframes “customers” as anyone who funds or will use the system—bosses, colleagues, clients, and end users—and offers practical rules to improve satisfaction: keep ego in check, prioritize the customer’s goals over personal attachment to the project, treat everyone with respect, focus on the real business problem, and maintain open, proactive communication. The column previews concrete approaches for each development phase to align delivery with customer needs and expectations.
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Validating Your Beta Testers by Closing the Feedback Loop
You rely on your testers to give you relevant, high-quality feedback about your product. This requires fostering a relationship with them so they feel that they’re being heard and valued.