Microsoft recently released their Roslyn Community Technology Preview. The Roslyn project gives developers access to the Visual Basic and C# compiler information through APIs. As described by Microsoft, “the Roslyn CTP previews the next generation of language object models for code generation, analysis, and refactoring, and the upcoming support for scripting and interactive use of VB and C#.” While that statement may seem pretty innocuous, this project is actually a very big deal. This will give developers greater ways to dynamically analyze code, refactor and generate code on the fly. Why Roslyn is Important for Business Software: Let’s say I have a Lead Receiver Service that accepts leads from a client. My Lead Receiver may accept SOAP or Restful data transfers from a client. The Receiver will process the Lead, store the Lead in the data store and send notifications that a Lead was received. When the service fails and… Continue reading →
At ClickPoint Software, we’re always striving to make our software as great as possible. By examining what we do well and what type of functionality our customers are looking for in lead management and automation software, we’re constantly updating our list of new feature ideas. We know that deciding what we don’t do is just as important as deciding what we should do. In dealing with development timelines and support, there are frequent points where decisions must be made as to what any particular development team should be working on. Most development companies have finite and often limited development resources. In these instances, a plan for choosing what developers should be working on is needed. Here’s the process of how our development team decides which tasks are worth pursuing. Continue reading →
Web.config transformations are an easy and elegant way to change what values will be in your web.config file depending on what ‘mode’ you publish in, all while leaving your development web.config file the same. A good example for where we heavily use web.config transformations is within our MusicMatters application. Due to the nature of MusicMatters, we have it set up for 3 different environments: Development, Testing, and Release. Continue reading →
Every developer tries their best to avoid being eclipsed by the latest and greatest technologies. Just when you think you have mastered the fine art of HTML 4, HTML 5 comes out. Browsers have infinite release schedules. Every time you think you have mastered a library or a language, a new shinier faster programming language comes in that promises to make everything work like magic. Sometimes developers will stop trying to keep up with all the rapidly evolving landscapes. It is impossible to be an expert in every new programming language, API or Framework that comes out. There are not enough hours in a 24 hour day. So how do you stay current without trying to master everything that comes out? Continue reading →
Recently, our CEO, Gabe Buck, brought our entire office into our conference room for a Monday morning meeting. Among many other topics, he asked our entire team the following question, “What do you think differentiates a company like ours from other similar companies in our industry that separates us from the competition?” Many answers were thrown around such as tenacity, attention to detail, reliability, and all of the other answers you might hear that are tossed around in a motivational company meeting. One term that did catch my attention was adaptability. Was it that I felt adaptability was more important that reliability or attention to detail? No. Was it that our company was not reliable or attentive to the needs of our customers? Absolutely not! Perhaps it was just true, that adaptability was something that our company has embraced and keeps us one step ahead of our competition. Continue reading →
