I will be giving a presentation entitled "Code Analysis, Metrics, and Style" at the end of the month to the Visual Developers of Upstate New York (VDUNY) user group, which meets once a month at Microsoft's office in Rochester, NY. The presentation, divided into 3 parts as the title suggests, will focus on using several tools available to developers to help them write better quality code.
The 'Code Analysis' section will highlight using the built-in 'Code Analysis' tools available in Visual Studio Team Editions as well as FxCop, which is the foundation for the built-in Code Analysis engine. These tools analyze the compile IL code and look for common programming errors.
The second section talks about using the Code Metric tools (again, available in the Visual Studio Team Editions) to determine the maintainability, complexity, and dependencies of your code. Using these metrics will help you determine what areas of the code you should focus on in order to make the software easier to maintain.
The last section will focus on using Microsoft's Source Analysis add-on for Visual Studio (StyleCop). In contrast to Code Analysis, Source Analysis analyzes your actual source code looking for style issues, such as all files need to have a copyright header, braces should be on new lines, methods should have doc comments, etc. While this may not seem that important, it can help enforce a common style for your entire codebase making it easier for others to get up to speed with your code.
Hope to see you there.
