We firmly believe spaghetti belongs on the dinner table and not in code. Our mission when starting NDepend was to create a tool to make best coding practices easier to maintain and improve. Writing has always been part of our message (see Patrick Smacchia’s work on CodeBetter.com) and we are proud to present our favorite pieces of writing from around the web in the last year, collected in what we are calling the Better Code Book.

We wanted to focus not only on how people use NDepend to improve their code for developers and architects, but also how to use static analysis in a broader, management sense. We are extremely grateful for our contributors in this project. Let us introduce them:

Bjørn Einar Bjartnes is a developer at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. His current role is a backend developer at the API team, serving web, mobile, TV clients and more metadata about programs- and video-streams. He holds a MSc in Engineering Cybernetics and has a background from the petroleum industry, which has probably shaped his view on systems design. Also, Bjørn is active in the local F# Meetup and a proud member of the lambda club, playing with all things useless related to computers. You can also follow him on Twitter: @bjartnes

Jack Robinson is a twenty-something student in his final year of a degree in Software Engineering at Victoria University of Wellington. Currently an Intern Developer at Xero, he enjoys writing clean code, playing a board game or two with his friends, or just sitting down and watching a good film. You can read not just his musings on computer science, but also reviews on films and more at his website jackrobinson.co.nz

Prasad Narravula is a programmer, architect, consultant, and problem-solving leader.  He helps teams in agile development essentials- feedback loops to fail fast, enabling (engineering) practices, iterative and incremental design, starting at the right place, discovery, and learning. When time permits, he writes at ObjectCraftworks.com.

Erik Dietrich, founder of DaedTech LLC, is a programmer, architect, development coach, writer, Pluralsight author, and technologist. You can read his writing and find out more about him at http://www.daedtech.com/ and you can follow him on Twitter @daedtech.

Anthony Sciamanna is a software developer from Philadelphia, PA who has worked in the industry for nearly 20 years. He specializes in leading and coaching development teams, improving development practices for cross-functional teams, Test-Driven Development (TDD), unit testing, pair programming, and other Agile / eXtreme Programming (XP) practices. He can be contacted via his website: anthonysciamanna.com

Tomasz Jaskula is a software craftsman, founder and organizer of Paris user groups for F# and Domain Driven Design. He focuses on creating software delivering true business value which aligns with the business’s strategic initiatives and bears solutions with clearly identifiable competitive advantage. He is currently working for a big French bank building reactive applications in F# and C#. In his free time, he runs a startup project on applying machine learning with F# to the recruitment field, speaks at conferences and user groups, and writes blogs and articles for a French magazine for coders called “Programmez !” You can visit his site jaskula.fr

We have collected their works and put them together into a great e-book as a way to show off our wonderful community. Check out the table of contents for the Better Code Book:

• The Importance of Static Code Analysis

• Decoupling Legacy Code Using NDepend

• Why Code Metrics are Important and How NDepend Can Help You

• Iterate Towards Better Code Reviews

• Relax, Everyone’s Code Rots

• Integrating NDepend with Teamcity 9

Thank you to all of our wonderful writers, and we hope you continue with more great articles in the year to come.

To get this collection, click the button below.

Patrick Smacchia

Website

My dad being an early programmer in the 70's, I have been fortunate to switch from playing with Lego, to program my own micro-games, when I was still a kid. Since then I never stop programming.

I graduated in Mathematics and Software engineering. After a decade of C++ programming and consultancy, I got interested in the brand new .NET platform in 2002. I had the chance to write the best-seller book (in French) on .NET and C#, published by O'Reilly and also did manage some academic and professional courses on the platform and C#.

Over my consulting years I built an expertise about the architecture, the evolution and the maintenance challenges of large & complex real-world applications. It seemed like the spaghetti & entangled monolithic legacy concerned every sufficiently large team. As a consequence, I got interested in static code analysis and started the project NDepend in 2004.

Nowadays NDepend is a full-fledged Independent Software Vendor (ISV). With more than 12.000 client companies, including many of the Fortune 500 ones, NDepend offers deeper insight and full control on their application to a wide range of professional users around the world.

I live with my wife and our twin kids Léna and Paul in the beautiful island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.