I work at a 150+ devcount site; we use VSTS/TFS2008, a necessity given the volume of projects and developers. But ... we are also running into ceiling issues with branching/merging and need MS consultancy to repair. TFS is by far the most mature source control system, but is actually not mature enough yet for flagship enterprise usage. Undoubtedly will become so in Rosario++. If you use VSS now and are in a 10+ developer situation, I still would advise migrating to TFS. You will however need someone (+ backup) with more than just suferficial knowledge of the workings of merging and branching. Tips and tricks are required, e.g. when it comes to issues due to renames, deletions, moves, simultaneously in changesets, branching for overlapping release management, component version integration issues, etc. etc.

Regards, Arjan Keene

Hi, As with any new kid on the block, there are many pro's and cons as summed up in earlier replies. But if you're from the data/domain modeling hoods, DDD is a rather logical follow-up. It has many merits, indeed specifically on *new* tracks/projects. I wrote an article on DDD that appeared in December in the Dutch .Net magazine, unfortunately that's not quite legible due to the Dutch. I hope to do a rewrite of it into a CP article soon. Here's a bloglink with some additional books/readings. http://weblogs.asp.net/pgielens/archive/2007/09/19/guide-to-start-with-domain-driven-design.aspx[^] regards, Arjan Keene

Colin, Probably enough replies by now, but I can throw in a reference to a (very subjective) 'hot/not' tools list on Roy Osherove's blog (one of the bloggers in the alt.net parade): http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2007/06/04/alt-net-alternative-tools-and-approaches-to-mainstream-net.aspx[^] Trouble with such a movement, in my view, that it can tend to become an incrowd 'with us or against us' debating club witjout some form of moderation. On the other hand, when it gains some clout, MS will stand to notice, as indeed happened with Scott Guthrie presenting at the recently held alt.net conference. Regards, Arjan Keene

I'm creating a document-centric app in which I combine the options 1 and 2. Tabbed is the default, and tiling and cascading is toolbar-selectable with a single click. Moreover, it will provide the means to select several of the multiple active docs and tile/cascade this selection. I'm not very fond of option 3, but that should be mixed in as a setting of choice. Thus, not or/or but and/and with users being able to select and/or at will. Reading this sentence back, not trivial to provide a non-confusing interaction. :confused: On the WPF count, I'd say WTF. The WPF team has also banned the beloved property grid, amongt many other controls. I do not believe WPF to be a progression on any count, at least not for the scope of business-tier-apps. Regards, Arjan Keene

Uhmm ...perhaps I'm an idiot, but I would qualify CP itself as being amongst the web whatever you call it social sites. And you're on it :)

I'd say that procedural/operational source control is mandatory, in any case. This does not necessarily imply that is implemented by means of functional/technical source control. For small teams, this can be an overkill. In my case, working in a 100+ programmers environment with multiple projects, we're on VSTS+TFS+clustered mirroring. The full-fledged MS stack is extremely beneficial in a large environment, with branching of versions, shared checkins, merging, shelving, and numerous dependencies to be guarded (in spite of component-based development ;-) However, it does mean having a full-time configuration manager and the technical facilities and personnel in place to be able to do that. Not an option for relatively small environments. The whole shabang of course is not by any means a guarantee for productivity and quality. Smaller teams are usually more effective and efficient on these counts ;-) Regards, Arjan Keene

I'd also recommend (probably in suggested lit. already though): - Craig Larman : Applying UML patterns (3rd ed.) - James Cooper : C# Design Patterns (= tougher, but a sample companion to the original GoF book) Regards, Arjan Keene

Imagine how much better the company could be, and the more mature it's products, when the average age is upped with a little wisdom of Life XP ;) Arjan Keene (four times eleven) -- modified at 13:21 Monday 16th July, 2007

Joining the queue for npp

After the paper, pencil & brains phase I'd suggest e.g. Visio: easy to acquire, pro look&feel, and also has some reasonable optional code-generation possibilities. In my experience, the more enterprisy and thus expensive the tool, the more useless they tend to be in daily business life (if anti-spamming is allowed here, this would include e.g. Select and any Rational product). Another option is the Class Designer in Studio, but is 1-on-1 with your type artifacts; advantageous, but already detailed and thus not always adequate as a design tool. Would be nice to have Studio mature further with integration of Visio layering and e.g. Borland Caliber RM (reqs mgmnt) as a standard integrated plug-in; together with MSF, work items and class designer this would bring almost the full cycle into a single tool.

Indeed, the MS evangelists colonising untrampled playgrounds, throwing cool aero glass trinkets at new generations of believers, expecting to trade for unlimited admiration and unconditional surrender to the new world.

Try Resharper