Current state of Visual Studio releases [March 2015]

Hi, my blog readers!

This is the second installment of Visual Studio releases update information on March 2015.

For complete series of Visual Studio releases update of my blog, go to: http://fsharpmonologue.blogspot.com/search/label/Visual%20Studio%20release%20state%20update

For March 2015, we have exciting news about Visual Studio! There are:

1. Visual Studio 2015 CTP 6 (February 2015)
2. Team Foundation Server 2015 CTP (February 2015)
3. Tooling SDK of Windows 10 (official name: Visual Studio Tools for Windows 10 Technical Preview2015

This update is a little bit late (it should be on 19th or 20th March), as I was keeping up with the streaming broadcast of dotnetconf 2015.

The dotnetconf 2015 is an online conference for all of .NET update including .NET Core, WPF, ASP.NET, Roslyn, F# and many more!

Didn’t have time to watch? Watch or download offline at: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/dotnetConf/2015

ENJOY!

Now, here are the updates…

Overview of the updates on March 2015

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Now let’s dive into those three above!

Visual Studio 2015 CTP 6

Visual Studio 2015 is at CTP 6. The CTP marks that this release is not for “go live” or for production environment. I will keep stating (or reminding) this as many of you, blog readers, including my friends are confusing the CTP for production environment.

This CTP 6 contains these notable features and improvements:

• UI debugging tool for XAML
• Single sign in (with integration to other cloud based authentication)
• Code Lens improvement for Git and also with support for C++, Javascript, and SQL script
• Code Maps improvements such as filtering, faster display (faster diagram rendering) performance
• Visual Studio tools for Cordova now supports Android 4.4 and 5.0 (Lollipop)
• Javascript editor improvement: support for // TODO comments, object literal intellisense
• and many more!

For complete list of CTP 6 release notes, visit: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/vs2015-vs

The official blog that described this release is available at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/02/23/visual-studio-2015-ctp-6-and-team-foundation-server-2015-ctp-released.aspx

With the release of CTP 6, it’s expected that Visual Studio 2015 is nearing the release of Release Candidate. This assumption is safe unless there is a notable bug needs to be fixed.

Special notes:

• The UI debugging tool for XAML in CTP 6 only supports WPF. Support for Windows Store app will be available in the final release.

The UI debugging is surely a very useful feature:

Please check up the original blog post of Visual Studio for more detailed explanation: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/02/23/visual-studio-2015-ctp-6-and-team-foundation-server-2015-ctp-released.aspx

Well.. I suggest you should download the ISO instead of using web installer to minimize error while installing this CTP, since the download is more than 4GB.

Team Foundation Server 2015 CTP

Team Foundation Server 2015 CTP is the next release after the preview release (the same time at Visual Studio 2015 Preview public release).

There are not so may improvements, but the improvements are mostly worthy to be considered:

• REST API support for TFS (previously only available for online TFS, Visual Studio Online)
• Team build improvements, including preview on MSBuild activity on TFS web portal (when accessing TFS via web) and cross platform builds (YESSS!! not just on Windows, now on Linux, XCode, and Android)
• Assign and invite testers
• and more (although it’s not so numerous)

The assign and invite testers is very helpful. Now you can invite testers, attached with the test suite number to test.

This is the screenshot from VisualStudio.com website (link below):

Those  screenshots are taken from the notable release notes of Team Foundation Server 2015 CTP. The official link is:

https://www.visualstudio.com/news/tfs2015-vs

Personal note on TFS:

Compared to other ALM product such as SVN or even commercial one such as StarTeam, TFS has widen the competitive edge. But compared specifically to IBM Rational UrbanCode coupled with IBM Rational Team Concert, TFS is quite on a par to IBM’s.

Visual Studio Tools for Windows 10 Preview (a.k.a. Tool for Windows 10 Preview)

Before you proceed, please read and notice my friendly reminder below.

If you want to try develop apps in Windows 10 Preview, this tooling is the one that you must install after you install Visual Studio 2015 CTP 6.

Why, because Visual Studio 2015 CTP 6 is the prerequisite of this tool.

Yes, the latest Windows 10 Preview on March 2015 is also available to be downloaded! But it is available after you join/register first for the Windows Insider program. Don’t worry, it’s totally free! Just go to this official site: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-faq

If you are done installing, there will be a new template for Windows 10 UAP (Universal App Platform) projects, not just the usual Windows 8/Windows 8.1/Windows 8.1 (phone) Universal Apps.

To bring you quick peek, I copy picture from Microsoft’s Somasegar’s blog on Visual Studio Tools for Windows 10:

Here is the original location of Somasegar’s blog entry: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2015/03/23/visual-studio-tools-for-windows-10-technical-preview.aspx

Now what are you waiting for? Code right now, guys! :)

RX Communica SDLC Journal: Feature Points

Hello there! I’m now writing about SDLC in the form of journal.

The journal will contain my quick insight and ideas taken from best practices, and it also contains my company’s (RX Communica) shared perspective and practices. RX Communica is my own hybrid of non-profit and profit company.

This journal doesn’t have to be in order of learning sequence, not like my F# adventure series. Enjoy!

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Now I’ll discuss feature point!

Feature point is a weighted score, and it should be based on how much the feature is anticipated based on "MUST HAVE" of Moscow method. It can also have psychological cost, in a sense of the importance of the feature.

At first creation, a feature will have either zero or positive point, but as the feature is used, it can also have negative point.

User feedback, especially when it's focused on a feature will be counted as a weighted score point.

These are the sample use cases and reasonings:

• If there's many negative point for this feature and if this feature is the base foundation for all other feature, then this feature needs to be prioritized to have attention, but it doesn't have to be integrated first. The attention is very critical, that it may lead to feature detach (abandon) or recreate the feature with different logic and refined functional spec and technical requirements. In my previous experience, the integration of this feature can be deferred for next minor or major release, depends on the criticalness.
• The feature that has many negative points should be considered as technical debt that has to be paid soon, as a debt has to be paid in order to decrease critical back log of feature defect that wasn't good thought at the beginning.
• If there's a new feature as the evolution consequence from this feature, then the new feature request based on this one should be rejected or we can investigate further and communicate to the stakeholder that this feature is based on current feature's negative points and it will add more negative points.
  This can lead to further democratization of how we provide the servicing of feedbacks from stakeholder, as if the positive feedbacks don't outweight the negative feedback, we can safely weighing more and leaning more on positive feedback as the source of prioritization consideration. This technique often called "crowdsourcing" but only in scope for software development.
• If the feature has many positive points and also has positive feedback points, then this feature can accept future enhancements.
• The feature (or can be features) that meets our coding and high reliability standard on extensibility (including the notion of Open-Closed principle from SOLID principle) has to be integrated first because it's easier to integrate with high confidence. This feature is therefore have high positive feature points.
• By keeping these green field and feature point concept from start, we will not be trapped easily into brown field model and complexity (smile)

This is to illustrate the fate of a feature in feature points perspective:

If you read the Code Complete 2nd Edition book, the feature point can be used to prioritize integration between features. Feature dependencies should be taken into account first, provided that you have dependency documentation available clearly. If there’s no documentation, then there’s a large possibility that the the software project will fail in the middle of development, test, or even when used in live production.

There’s a video from Channel 9 MSDN website that quickly describe feature point in action. This video is about the introduction to C# 4 design team, but it’s very worthy to watch.

Here’s the link: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/C-40-Meet-the-Design-Team

NOTE: the feature points not to be confused with feature point matrix of function points.

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Further references

1. Code Complete 2nd Edition for online reading (if you have Safari account): http://techbus.safaribooksonline.com/book/software-engineering-and-development/0735619670
2. Code Complete 2nd Edition book to buy at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670/
3. Function points for measuring algorithm, inputs, outputs complexities: http://www.spr.com/feature-points.html
4. MosCow method: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_Method
5. Crowdsourcing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

Visual Studio 2013 has been released

Hi my blog audiences!

Yes, you’re right! It’s not a typo! Visual Studio 2013 has been released and available to download!

Just go to: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/products/2013-editions

This is the original announcement by Somasegar in his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2013/10/17/visual-studio-2013-available-for-download.aspx

What’s new in Visual Studio 2013: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/visual-studio-2013

The editions of Visual Studio 2013 are the same as Visual Studio 2012:

1. Express
2. Test Professional
3. Professional
4. Premium
5. Ultimate

For those new to Visual Studio, I suggest starts using Visual Studio 2013 Express Edition.

Here’s the link: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2013-express

Now, everything is getting more interesting in Visual Studio world! Visual Studio will have shorter cadence release! This is also a perfect sample of Application Lifecycle Management discipline clearly implemented!

The picture was from a slide deck of Brian Harry, MS Technical Fellow, when delivering presentation on TechEd North America 2013.

This means, every 11 to 13 months a new Visual Studio version will always be available.