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

What .NET Developers Can Gain from XP Practices

Over the past few years, as always, new technologies and methods for building software have emerged. Two of the largest and most publicized have been XP and Microsoft''s launch of the .NET Framework. They have both come from very different places and focus on different areas of the software development paradigm.

.NET is a brand name given by Microsoft to their latest range of development tools and frameworks. Here I focus on the use of the Microsoft .NET Framework for developing software that runs on the Common Language Runtime. Since the launch of the .NET Framework, Microsoft has been pushing hard to help companies develop software on the new platform. The success of .NET will depend on the uptake by software developers and then the clients of the software that is developed. The more software developed, and therefore available for a platform, the more attractive it becomes to utilize it, the more likely it will be that developers build software for it, and so on. Bill Gates terms this a virtuous cycle.

So what have these two new things in the software development world got to do with each other? When development teams move to a new language or development platform, they do so for a reason, not just because it''s there! These reasons can vary, but the core theme that runs through them is "it will help us develop better software." Better can mean several things: faster, more robust, higher quality, more usable, greater scalability, less code to write, and so forth. Many of the teams I have worked with over the past few years have made the decision to not only adopt a new development toolkit, but also a new process for developing software. I have seen a trend emerging of teams moving both to .NET and adopting a more agile development process. These are eXtreme .NET teams.