Author: Erik Dietrich
I'm a passionate software developer and active blogger. Read about me at my site.
How to Analyze a Complex Solution
I’ve made no secret that I spend a lot of time these days analyzing code bases as a consultant, and I’ve also made no secret that I use NDepend (and...
Enforcing Immutability in Multi-Threaded Projects with NDepend
Early in the days of object oriented programming, we really got a lot of mileage out of the language and paradigm features. For instance, if your memory extends back far...
5 Habits that Help Code Quality
When I’m called in to do a strategic assessment of a codebase, it’s never the result of everything being awesome. That is, no one calls me up and says, “we’re...
How to Get Developers to Adopt Coding Standards
If you’re a manager, there’s a decent chance that the subject of coding standards makes you want to bang your head against a wall repeatedly. If you’re a developer, you...
Managing Risk in your Project with Static Analysis
When software developer talk about static analysis, it’s often in the context of craft improvement. Ask most developers in a group about static analysis tools and you’ll get a range...
Static Analysis and The Other Kind of False Positives
A common complaint and source of resistance to the adoption of static analysis is the idea of false positives. And I can understand this. It requires only one case of...
4 Ways Custom Code Metrics Improve A Development Team
One of the things that has surprised me over the years is how infrequently people take advantage of custom code metrics. I say this not from the perspective of a...
The Biggest Mistake Static Analysis Could Have Prevented
As I’ve probably mentioned before, many of my clients pay me to come do assessments of their codebases, application portfolios and software practice. And, as you can no doubt imagine,...
5 Reasons Architects and Developers Don’t Get Along
There’s a cute term for a blog post or article that advertises, in its title, a number of points of interest. For example, “9 Tips for Getting out of Debt,”...
Improve Your Code Review Game with NDepend
Code review is a subject with which I’m quite familiar. I’m familiar first as a participant, both reviewing and being reviewed, but it goes deeper than that. As an IT...
The Power of CQLinq for Developers
I can still remember my reaction to Linq when I was first exposed to it. And I mean my very first reaction. You’d think, as a connoisseur of the programming profession,...
Let’s Build a Metric: Wrapping Up
In the penultimate post in the metrics series, I explained the reasoning for winding down this series. I also talked about performing one last experiment. Well, that last experiment is...
How to Add Static Analysis to Your Development Process
As a consultant, one of the more universal things that I’ve observed over the years is managerial hand-waving. This comes in a lot with the idea of agile processes, for instance....
Legacy Code for Developers: Managing your Manager
Here’s a campfire horror story of legacy code that probably sounds at least somewhat familiar. One day, your manager strolls by casually, sipping a cup of coffee, and drops a...
Static Analysis for Small Business
I was asked recently, kind of off the cuff, whether I thought that static analysis made sense for small business. I must admit that the first response that popped into...
A Manager’s Guide to Legacy Code
If you have a sadistic streak and manage a team of software developers, it’s probably high entertainment to dredge up some old, dusty piece of software and then to task...
NDepend vs. ReSharper
Not too long ago, someone asked me for a comparison of ReSharper (commonly and affectionately abbreviated R#) and NDepend. I didn’t really grok the question, so I asked, “in what...
Let’s Build a Metric Reconsidered
If you’ve been keeping track, you’ll noticed that it’s been a while since the last post in this series. In case you’d forgotten or lost track, the primary goal is to...
Bridging the Communication Gap Between Developers and Architects
If you want to set off a ceaseless, spirited discussion, ask a roomful of people what makes some music good and other music bad. The opinions are likely to be...
Put a Little NDepend in your Visual Studio
The software development world is filled with what I think of as “Coke-Pepsi” debates. This is how my brain categorizes debates over preference that are almost entirely subjective. There is...
Calculating the ROI of NDepend
Years ago, I discovered NDepend and downloaded it for a trial. At the time, I found myself working in a .NET shop where a lot of developers worked in the...
That Code’s Not Dead – It Went To a Farm Upstate… And You’re Paying For It
When it comes to pets, there’s a heartbreaking lie that parents often tell little children when they believe that those children are not yet ready to wrap their heads around...
The Case for the NDepend Dashboard Feature
If you hang around agile circles long enough, you’re quite likely to hear the terms “big, visible chart” and “information radiator.” I think both of these loosely originate from the...
Visualizing Your (Real) Software Architecture
Diagrams of software architecture have a certain aesthetic appeal to them. They usually consist of grayscale or muted pastel colors and nice, soft shapes with rounded edges. The architects that make...
With Code Metrics, Trends are King
Here’s a scene that’s familiar to any software developer. You sit down to work with the source code of a new team or project for the first time, pull the...
Let’s Build a Metric: Global and Local Scope
Last time in this series, I began an exploration of how a method might be impacted by the scope of the variables that it uses. The idea is that it’s...
Be Careful with Software Metaphors
Over the years, there have been any number of popular software metaphors that help people radically misunderstand the realities of software development. Probably the most famous and persistent one is...
The Most Important Code Metrics You’ve Never Heard Of
Oh, how I hope you don’t measure developer productivity by lines of code. As Bill Gates once ably put it, “measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress...
Let’s Build a Metric: Using CQLinq to Reason about Application State
I’ve been letting the experiments run for a bit before posting results so as to give all participants enough time to submit, if they so choose. So, I’ll refresh everyone’s...
Mistakes Dev Managers Make
Managing a team of software developers is a tall order. This is doubly true when the line management includes both org chart duties (career development, HR administrivia, etc) and responsibility...