Easy to Miss Code Smells
July 7, 2016 2 minutes read The concept of a code smell is, perhaps, one of the most evocative in our profession. The name itself has a levity factor to...
How to Get an Edge as an IT Management Consultant
June 30, 2016 2 minutes read I’ve made no secret of, and even frequently referred to my consulting practice including aspects of IT management consulting. In short, one of my...
How to Analyze a Complex Solution
June 23, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
Enforcing Immutability in Multi-Threaded Projects with NDepend
June 16, 2016 2 minutes read Early in the days of object oriented programming, we really got a lot of mileage out of the language and paradigm features. For instance,...
5 Habits that Help Code Quality
June 9, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
How to Get Developers to Adopt Coding Standards
June 2, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
Managing Risk in your Project with Static Analysis
May 26, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
Static Analysis and The Other Kind of False Positives
May 19, 2016 2 minutes read A common complaint and source of resistance to the adoption of static analysis is the idea of false positives. And I can understand this....
4 Ways Custom Code Metrics Improve A Development Team
May 12, 2016 2 minutes read One of the things that has surprised me over the years is how infrequently people take advantage of custom code metrics. I say this...
The Biggest Mistake Static Analysis Could Have Prevented
May 5, 2016 2 minutes read 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,...
5 Reasons Architects and Developers Don’t Get Along
April 28, 2016 1 minutes read 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...
Code Metric Visualization: Lines of Code and Code Coverage
April 19, 2016 1 minutes read One of the features of NDepend that we get a lot of positive feedback about is its data visualization, and it’s really no surprise....
The Power of CQLinq for Developers
April 14, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
Let’s Build a Metric: Wrapping Up
April 7, 2016 1 minutes read In the penultimate post in the metrics series, I explained the reasoning for winding down this series. I also talked about performing one last...
How to Add Static Analysis to Your Development Process
March 31, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
Legacy Code for Developers: Managing your Manager
March 24, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
Static Analysis for Small Business
March 10, 2016 1 minutes read I was asked recently, kind of off the cuff, whether I thought that static analysis made sense for small business. I must admit that...
A Visual Studio script that saves time and pain
March 7, 2016 2 minutes read After years of pain, I finally found a clean-and-definitive way to get rid of the dreadful issue Could not copy assembly, the process cannot...
A Manager’s Guide to Legacy Code
March 3, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
The Better Code Book – Our MVPs of 2015
February 24, 2016 3 minutes read We firmly believe spaghetti belongs on the dinner table and not in code. Our mission when starting NDepend was to create a tool to...
How Siemens Healthcare manages over 500 million lines of code – An NDepend Case Study
February 23, 2016 1 minutes read Siemens Healthcare produces imaging equipment for the medical sector in a variety of fields and is based in Germany. Looking to reduce development costs on...
Let’s Build a Metric Reconsidered
February 18, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
Bridging the Communication Gap Between Developers and Architects
February 12, 2016 1 minutes read If you want to set off a ceaseless, spirited discussion, ask a roomful of people what makes some music good and other music bad....
Put a Little NDepend in your Visual Studio
February 4, 2016 1 minutes read 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...
Calculating the ROI of NDepend
January 28, 2016 3 minutes read Years ago, I discovered NDepend and downloaded it for a trial. At the time, I found myself working in a .NET shop where a...
That Code’s Not Dead – It Went To a Farm Upstate… And You’re Paying For It
January 21, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
The Case for the NDepend Dashboard Feature
January 14, 2016 2 minutes read 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...
Visualizing Your (Real) Software Architecture
January 11, 2016 1 minutes read 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...
With Code Metrics, Trends are King
December 31, 2015 2 minutes read 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...
Let’s Build a Metric: Global and Local Scope
December 24, 2015 4 minutes read Last time in this series, I began an exploration of how a method might be impacted by the scope of the variables that it...