eXtreme .NET: Introducing eXtreme Programming Techniques to .NET Developers [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Working in The Ever-Faster-Changing World

The pace of change in the business world continues to increase at a dramatic rate. Even with the downturn after the dot.com crash, the business world is moving forward at a more rapid pace than ever before. With less funding available for IT projects, more than ever is expected from software development teams. To keep up with customer and client requests, we need some help.

The Answers According to Microsoft

Microsoft''s response to this need follows their line of reasoning behind tools such as Visual Basic, Visual C++, and MFC: Let us (Microsoft) worry about the plumbing, and you (the developer) can worry about solving the business problems. The .NET Framework takes this a step further than any of the offerings before. The .NET Framework provides what is, in effect, a large virtual machine for your software to run on. This framework provides a huge amount of base functionality for you to work with to meet your customer needs. It also enables you to interoperate with existing COM-based technology and write your solutions as components, with different components being written in different languages.

The Answers According to XP

Emerging almost simultaneously with the .NET Framework, with the aim of solving some of the same problems, has been the agile development movement (http://www.agilealliance.org). One of the most well-publicized and written about of the agile development methods is XP. XP aims, through the use of the practices explained in this chapter, to solve these problems of ever-changing needs and creating big, complex solutions.

How .NET and XP Fit Together

.NET is a concrete