Programming

I really like MEF and I really like proper IoC containers (let the flames begin). I do not think they are mutually exclusive, but best suited for different goals. I consider MEF to be a great way to perform macro level componentization. In other words, it is a way to wire up components that are physically in different assemblies, but it is not well suited for the micro level componentization in which I need to wire up my dependencies within my application.

Software quality is the great white whale of the software industry. We often seek it, but are totally unprepared to do anything about it. As in the tale by Melville, we can point out our Captain Ahab’s who are driven towards the extremes in ensuring quality. We also have the rest of the world that gets by not even thinking about it, except to say we know someone who knows someone that heard someone else talk about it in the dark corners of tavern once. It is one of the most critical facets of a successful software project, yet most teams are willing to cut corners in quality to meet other goals. In my experience, quality is often the second area where team resources are cut, right after documentation.

I have decided to dig deeper into an area of development I usually try to avoid – the client. Not just another rich desktop client, but a web client. For years, I have always kept myself at arms length when dealing with client technologies, especially web technologies. I have worked with them many times, but I have always preferred the server side. I have worked with nearly every Microsoft client technology from the Window C API, MFC, ATL, WTL, VB, WinForms, WPF, and probably a few others I can no longer remember. Each one of those frameworks helped to convince me that I prefer the server side. I had even done some ASP and ASP.NET development at various times. Its not that these frameworks are ‘wrong’, it is just that I prefer the server side.

Recently, I have received a few requests for some changes and an example for my Type Tracking Extension for Unity. This post is to address those requests. Of course, all of the source code for this post is added to the GitHub project Unity Extensions .

Nearly every application I write has a project called ConsoleDriver in it. This project is almost always the same as it is just a main routine that create the class that starts my program, wraps it in an exception block, usually configures logging, and waits until I hit enter or CTRL-C to signal the application to exit.