Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software

After a few years of working with code editors and drag-and-drop design tools, it’s easy to just start using VS .NET without exploring it in any depth. But between the complexity and extensibility of the IDE, it’s worth spending some time to see if you can make the development environment better for you. Consider these points:

• Select a profile that makes sense to you. I recommend the VS .NET default profile.

• Review the Tools Options settings to customize the IDE.

• Check out the VS .NET PowerToys for additional customization.

• Learn how to record and use VS .NET macros.

• As you have time and funds, test the various VS .NET add-ins to see which ones save you time or improve the quality of your code.

So far I’ve been talking as if you’re going to write all of the code in your project yourself. But in the .NET world, that’s never the case. Not only are there thousands of lines of code in the .NET Framework, there is a wide variety of reusable source code available for free. In the next chapter, I’ll discuss some of the things that you can do to effectively use other people’s code in your own projects.