Microsoft Enterprise Library Rediscovered

Brilliant.

I have just accidentally rediscovered Microsoft Enterprise Library. A set of common "building blocks" for .net applications. I used version 3.1 on an old project back in 2007 and it was a real time saver.

I have just downloaded v4.1 and it looks like it covers lots more. Will post more thoughts when I have had more time to figure it all out.

Unit testing is dead. Long live peer reviews.

Just a quick update to the unit testing trial we were conducting….. Management canned it. Due to the iterative development approach we follow it would have taken about three months to get some hard and fast figures and that wasn’t the sort of timescales they were looking at. Despite this I am still valiantly plugging away trying to prove the case for unit testing and hope that the decision will be reviewed in the coming months.

One of the more interesting measures that have been introduced to ensure quality on the project is peer reviews. Following each completed piece of development work a senior developer is assigned to review the code we have produced. Peer review as I understand it is a process of code review where code is pored over, design decisions challenged and suggestions for improvement debated. At my organisation it has been implemented as a checklist of things that should be done, with the focus not on quality, but getting ticks in a box. Very frustrating.