I was introduced to VisualAssist a few years ago and for me there's no going back. Are there any other tools I'm missing out on?
If you're a vim user, ViEmu is indispensable. It's a plugin available for Visual Studio (SQL Server and Office as well, although it's sold separately) that transforms the editor into Vim.
Another plugin by the same company is Codekana. In its current incarnation, it spruces up code structure considerably, and makes reading code much more pleasurable. Based on several chats with the author, he's planning on growing it into other areas as well.
BeyondCompare : Life-changing folder & file diff with many installable extensions for additional file types. Don't know what I'd do without it.
There's a few things that get installed on every computer I use for development:
ExamDiff is the best light-weight diff program I've found.
Tortoise SVN is the best version control client
Perforce is a way to make your life worse when your company inflicts it upon you.
Just after installing VisualAssist I go after WinMerge, which also significantly simplified my life.
I tried Resharper for a while. It was great but too expensive for my taste and I could not get my employer to purchase it when the trial expired. You might take a look.
I own all of these tools and use them on a regualar basis.
Resharper
CodeRush/Refactor Pro!
NDepend
Gallio/MbUnit
Related
I am a intermediate-level developer (I think). I almost always work alone.
I have always just save my code to my hard drive and then published it to my server. I almost always over-write old code. If I make a big mistake I will get a backup restored from my web host. Obviously this can be a pain and cost time.
I know there must be a better way. I guess I could just save copies each time I change a file but that seems like it could get confusing too if I have 1000 different versions each time I make a minor tweak.
What is the best solution? It seems GIT type services may be more hassle than it is worth in my situation.
You work on the wrong way...
Try a CVS, that kind of software administrate versions and changes by itself.
Read about how implement a SVN solution, that will help you a lot.
GIT, Codeplex and other repositories are based on that kind of tools.
the problem in steps:
Source control
Google has a full list of articles, if you use GIT, this is my favorite:
http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
and see this other
www.bignerdranch.com/blog/you-need-source-code-control-now/
but Source control isn't just a backup.
See
Is there a fundamental difference between backups and version control?
Backup your Source
You need a copy of your code in a backup server, site or external dispositive.
GIT or Subversion is for source control not for copy.
see "Backup Best Practices: Read This First!"
and set a tool for this work periodically.
Software Configuration Management
You need set a system for the software change, step by step, start with the user needs and cover all methodology work
see redmine ...
Where can I find the code for creating an online rebol console like the one here ?
http://tryrebol.esperconsultancy.nl/
Update: for the sandbox system on the server, can't Rebol manage it itself with some security wrapper and its security options ?
As for console itself, I don't know Ruby so I don't want to use TryRuby and why would I need it ? Can't I mimic Rebol console itself by "remoting" it somehow ? Why RT or Esper Consultancy can't make an opensource version ? There's no value in keeping it closed source. Rebol needs to prove it's more open than in the past.
In my opinion, you should aim higher with something like the already open-sourced Try Ruby. You'd type in expressions and it would guide you. Their showcase site is at tryruby.org and is fairly slick.
I modified TryRuby to work with Rebol and it wound up looking like this:
But I'm not going to run it on my server because I didn't want to belabor the necessary sandboxing/etc. or protections against someone running an infinite loop. I can give you what I've got so far if you want it.
I started a tutorial script here that no one seemed interested in helping me with, so I wandered off to other tasks:
http://www.rebol.net/wiki/Interactive_tutorial_script
I'm not sure what exactly you want. You mention you want a remote REBOL shell instead of a tutoring setup, but that's what the Try REBOL site is. There are several reasons it's not open source:
It's in heavy development. I'm currently changing the code regularly.
So it's not in a release state. Preparing it for release, documenting and publishing it would take a lot of extra work, as with most projects.
It's written in my CMS that's also in heavy development. Even if the Try REBOL site were open source, it wouldn't run. The CMS is not planned to be open sourced soon.
It's not meant as a generic REBOL remoting tool, but as a one-off demo site. If that site is running, what's the use of more of them?
As others have answered, there are many generic solutions for remoting that you could use. Also, most parts of the Try REBOL site are readily available as open source:
Syllable Server, produced and published by us.
The Cheyenne web server.
The HTML source of the web client can be viewed, including my simple JavaScript command service bus.
Syllable Server is an essential part of the site, as the sandboxing is not done with REBOL facilities (except some extra limits in the R3 backend), but with standard Linux facilities.
A truly air tight (do I mean silica tight?) sandbox is close to impossible with R2.
R3 (still in alpha) is looking a lot more promising. The deep technical discussions in flight right now (see Cure code and AltME/REBOL3 Proposals regarding unwinds and protect and even occasionally mentioning sandboxes should lead to an excellent sandbox capability.
Right now, the big advance R3 has that makes Kaj's tryREBOL possible is R3's secure policy settings which make it possible (with some careful wrapper code) to construct an alpha/demo sandbox.
To answer your precise question("where can I find code...", you could try asking Kaj for his :)
I'm new to StackOverflow. I'm not sure if this is going to end up as a reply to your comment, or as a new answer.
The somewhat common idea that any project can be open sourced and contributed to by others is a naive view. In the case of my Try REBOL site, it makes no sense. It's not just in heavy development; it's written in a CMS that's also in heavy development. Basically noone could contribute to it at this point, because I'm the only one who knows my CMS. Or in any case its newest features, which I develop by developing Try REBOL, and other example sites. So developing Try REBOL means developing the CMS at the same time, and by definition, I'm the only one who can do that.
More generally, my projects are bleeding edge, innovative technology with a strong vision. The vision is mine, and to teach it to others, I have to build it to show how I intended it to work. So there's a catch 22: to enable others to contribute, I have to finish my projects first, because people typically don't understand them until I show them how they work.
There certainly are other projects where mass contribution makes more sense. Still, only the top projects get the contributors. We found that out the hard way. We created Syllable Desktop and Syllable Server with surrounding infrastructure for contributions. These are fairly classic, well understood operating systems that many people could work on in parallel. However, despite years of begging, we get very few contributions.
So, if you feel a burning need to contribute to our projects, please pick one of the many tasks in Syllable to execute. :-)
I absolutely love the Source Code Ouliner power toy that I use in VS2005 but am upgrading to 2010 and it seems they haven't yet released a new version. Is there anything similar that shows you a basic outline of the file you are currently navigating?
ReSharper, amongst many other features, has a File Structure window which does the same as Source Outliner.
For a free one, try the Solution Navigator in the Microsoft Productivity Power Tools.
Like you, I found this a totally great plug in that saved on the order of minutes per day. No more searching for functions! Luckily Source Outliner has been re-created for VS2010 and is still free. However, sbohlen updated it and it now runs on the (free) DXCore environment. I have been using it ever since I upgraded to VS2010.
You can read along as I got this set up, downloaded all the parts and got it running.
http://unhandled-exceptions.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/23/plugins-for-dxcorecoderushxpresscoderushrefactor-pro-201014-rtm-available/
The download is here:
http://code.google.com/p/dxsourceoutliner/downloads/list
You will also need the DXCore community installer from http://www.devexpress.com
But as a ReSharper user for years now, I will use the File Structure - same sort of view and already built in to R#.
We have a new build machine to start using for our programming team. We are still trying to figure out how we want to organize everything to get the best configuration for building EXEs and DLLs.
We are using VB6 and VB.Net 2005, and VSS2005.
We were thinking of making working folders set for each project, release and support tickets. Does anyone have experience with a similar set up? What were your likes/dislikes? Any recommendations (New VSS IDs, folder configuration, setting working folder, updating/building files)?
be agile - just grow it and and don't be afraid to change as you go a long. Pick something very simple to start with and see how it goes.
Here is my simple environment. Decide what you want to do on a desktop to implement the joel test question #2. This in my experience is pivotal. Once you can do the complete build and test on a desktop with one (or a couple of) clicks then you have the basis for an automated build machine.
The trick is get this going quickly using what ever tools are at hand quickly - e.g. VSS and Cruise control, MSBuild etc, and tune. You should be able to get a pretty good (80/20 rule) in a few days of iterative effort.
Edit: Just to answer comment.
Yes you are correct is is be very beneficial to learn from other people experiences (not just their practises). However having set up build environments in may different companies I can say the best thing is once you start with some else's complexity you end up fighting other peoples requirements and assumptions. Yes I've now got experience and I can use that as a metric to start easily.
Watch out for issues when building VB6 components that depend on each other - see discussion in this question.
I use Intellij Idea 7 for Java dev. My dev is 'limited' to all J2SE features plus light JSP, Servlets, and super light usage of JPA. No J2EE, no massive use of random frameworks, etc.
Is it worth upgrading to ver 8? "Worth it" to me means better "core functionality" in terms of speed (ESPECIALLY startup speed), memory utilization (seems like it starts having serious problems with four or more projects open), and auto bug-finding.
More frameworks supported and more languages supported (other than perhaps Haskell and C++), and more refactorings don't interest me at this time.
A while back, I installed a preview version of 8 and it seemed -exactly- the same as 7, as far as my needs were concerned.
Anyone loving the upgrade to 8, and if so, why?
Thanks
It also seems to be easier to configure a new project over top of a complex collection of existing code.
For example, something that you would naturally configure into 5 or more modules.
There is a really beautiful go to/create test wizard that is bound to ctrl-shift-T. Worth the upgrade by itself
The best way to tell is to check out the list of new features and decide for yourself. I haven't discovered any single feature so far that by itself is worth upgrading - the simplified UML view is quite nice, as is the improved Maven integration. The UI feels a bit more streamlined and faster. It seems like most of the attention has gone into non-Java features like better Flex support (which I am really thankful for as I don't like FlexBuilder but I haven't had a chance to use yet).
IntelliJ 8 has a configure plugins feature that allows you to disable plugins with dependencies. Nothing trial and error couldn't replicate, but it is nice.
Startup is only marginally slower. But indexing once opened is a lot faster than before, even unnoticeable for most projects, except after a commit to Subversion. It seems a commit to subversion triggers the indexing twice.
I am working on the Diana-EAP build - but 8 has git integration built in. The EAP has better git integration than the 8.0.1 release - it looks like that is something they are really focusing on.
Definitely not! Seems that the variables defined in our custom taglibs are no longer able to be used in the jsp (worked in 7.0.4). All red. No auto complete.
Oh, and the new settings menu is horrendous!
Some benefits of IntelliJ IDEA 8:
IDEA 8 supports Subversion 1.5 new functionality - e.g. merge tracking, which may be useful especially if your team (like ours) uses a lot of development branches and thus merging is frequent.
One detail I appreciated about IDEA 8: As you probably know, IDEA has had changelists for pretty long now, built on top of any underlying version control system - this is a really useful feature. So, now that Subversion itself supports changeslists, IDEA's changelist implementation has been changed so that it is perfectly compatible with Subversion's native changeslists. (For example, you'll be able to work with any changelists created in IDEA also when using svn command line tools directly.)
Edit: in your case, perhaps it is not worthwhile to upgrade. For me, at least, startup and file indexing seems to be somewhat slower in 8 than 7. [But for me personally the upgrade was definitely worth it, because it solved a long-standing VCS problem with IDEA 7 - it could hang "waiting for VCS sync to finish" for an hour or whatever after hitting Ctrl-K.]