From time to time, even in this enlightened age of software development, I run into developers that don’t use version control for their software projects. I don’t understand why. The state of software development isn’t like it was a decade ago where CVS was the only free option and all of the commercial systems cost a lot of money. I even remember when people had to pay for Visual SourceSafe just to endure the pain. But in the modern era, there are a lot of choices that are very economical, and the commercial systems aren’t that bad either. More...

Since learning about Source Server and how it works with debuggers such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio or WinDBG from the Debugging Tools for Windows, I’ve become an avid fan of adding version control information to my debug and release-mode PDB symbol files. I’ve learned the value of having this information in my symbol files for debugging programs that I’ve released to users that they have had problems with. Also, having them for debugging minidumps has become an invaluable tool that I simply cannot live without. More...

I used to be a 100% Java programmer back in the late 90’s and 2000-2001. Well, that’s not true. I was about 80% Java, 20% MFC/C++/Windows. But then .NET came into my world and I decided that I really wanted to be back developing true Windows applications (I didn’t need the run anywhere promise of Java), and I haven’t really looked back. But then, in 2009, I hit a problem that I could only solve in Java, and I realize how much of that former knowledge that I have lost. More...

About a week ago, I started taking a look at a new version control system (at least it’s new to me). The version control system is called Git, and it’s one of a new generation of distributed version control systems that are being targeted towards geographically distributed teams. Git is gaining significant ground in the open source world as it was originated by the Linux kernel team to coordinate their development of the Linux kernel. But I’m seeing it pop up on more things such as FitNesse. More...

In my last post, I discussed what my production environment looks like for ImaginaryRealities.com. In this post, I'll discuss my development environment that I'm using to build the ImaginaryRealities.com web site. I won't focus so much on the hardware than on the software and tools that I'm using to build the web site. More...

One of the aspects of software development that I take pride in is what I perceive to be my knowledge of building and releasing software. As I go from project to project, I've learned that not many people fully understand the importance that a project's structure or build process has to the success of a project. It's not just about creating directories. What I like to call "build engineering" affects your version control strategies, customer support strategies, and the ability to manage multiple releases of your software in a production environment. As a developer, it's too easy to focus on the next release of the software and try to forget that you have customers that are actively using various earlier versions of your applications. More...