Rachna

At work, we are using CruiseControl.NET for continuous integration of our many software projects.  It’s a pretty robust system, which we have configured to use NAnt and MSBuild to compile the projects and package them up for our operations team.  However, there was no comprehensive coding style enforcement on our projects… until now. My manager approached me to add FxCop enforcement into the mix.  FxCop is, in short, a combination style guide/enforcer.  There is a UI tool that makes it easy to define your FxCop projects, setting the rules and target files to review.  A command-line tool can be called directly or integrated into Visual Studio or other build/test tools (like NAnt in our case).  You could even build your own rules on top of those that come with the FxCop 1.36 toolkit .  If you want to ensure that you have easy-to-read code conforming to standard guidelines – either Microsoft’s or your own – check out FxCop. There is not yet direct support for FxCop in CruiseControl.NET , so I had to do a bit of research.  The page listed in the prior sentence did not actually offer me enough guidance to successfully implement FxCop on ccNET, so I did a bit of googling (well, ‘binging’ to be more exact) and found two blogs with entries that were quite useful in clearing the way for me to implement this solution – Mikhail says… and Ben Reichelt’s Weblog .  Ben and Mikhail – thank you for sharing your learning so that I too could integrate FxCop and ccNET.

Originally posted here:
Policing our builds with FxCop 1.36

Being a programmer and a woman does not better enable me to design more user-friendly, intuitive technology.  My higher estrogen levels also do not make me more creative. Oh, if it were only that easy! After all, the training and experience of most programmers is probably very similar.  In Alan Cooper’s book, “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum” (highly recommend), he describes the conflicts of interest that exist when a programmer is tasked with doing real design and how our training (and sometimes inherent traits) make us good programmers and bad designers.  In a time where companies are cutting costs and people and requiring more from each employee, many programmers are tasked with doing all the design work.  Most of us enjoy it – I do.  I like the creative process.  However, given my training and background, self-referential design does not always provide the best result.  Alan Cooper is the father of a design process called “Interaction Design” .  Joel Spolsky suggests “Hallway Usability Testing” (note to self – don’t grab another programmer for this task!) and using the “Five Why’s” .  Our training makes us better designers, not our hormone levels.

Read more:
How can women improve technology?