Random Cool Things

In the last week or so, there’s been a number of interesting emails pass through my inbox. So interesting in fact, I wanted to make sure to share them.

Aren’t those Code Metrics for .NET in Visual Studio great? I find them very helpful to give me interesting insights into code as I’m in the middle of developing. When looking to pay off some technical debt, the Code Metrics are the first place I spend quality time looking for lots of interdependencies and cyclomatic complexity. The only problem is that the Code Metrics are locked in the IDE so it’s not something that you can run as part of your daily builds, which many people have been requesting for year. The Visual Studio team has heard the cries and released the Visual Studio Code Metrics Power Tool 1.0, which is a command line version you can integrate into your builds. The output is an XML file and as we all know, you can party on XML all day long for reporting and analysis. I’m sure there will be people out there working on TFS reports for this very soon.

For you native C++ developers out there, I was contacted by a representative from Australia’s NICTA (their center for R&D on information and communication technology) about a very interesting spin off, Red Lizards and their Goanna Studio. I’m downloading the trial edition now because it looks like the Visual Studio /analyze switch on steroids. With whole program analysis, redundant code highlighting, and great Visual Studio integration, I’m excited to take a look at it. I’ll report here on this tool in a later blog entry.

How many of you love grinding through .NET mini dump after .NET mini dump with WinDBG and SOS/SOSEX looking for the same things over and over? As you’ve found out, it really gets old after a while. Sukesh Ashok Kumar, who must never sleep, not only works full time at Microsoft, but has released version two of his fascinating Debug Analyzer .NET. Sukesh has wrapped up the mini dump drudgery in a very nice UI with an extensible plug in model. The idea is that if you are doing common operations on mini dumps write an extension to do that analysis to save your fingers. Sukesh’s API makes working with .NET mini dumps simple and best of all, you can write your mini dump analysis routines in your .NET language of choice. I’ve always loved Roberto Farah’s outstanding PowerDBG, but I’m adding Debug Analyzer .NET to my arsenal because sometimes it’s just easier to write analysis code in C# with Visual Studio.

Finally, I just have to giggle with glee about the new OneNote for iPhone application! As I’ve always said that OneNote is the “Greatest Piece of Software Ever Invented”®™ it’s a dream to have OneNote on my phone too!