Bigger Toolbox ? Or ?

Almost the last of my posts inspired by the SIGIST conference last week

During Bj Rollisons talk on "How We Test At Microsoft" he showed one slide that listed the tools they used

• Code Analysis


• Dynamic Analysis


• Coverage


• Monitoring Tools


• Simulation


• Fault Injection


• Harnesses and frameworks


• Project Management


• Bug Management


• Reporting Systems


• Perf/Stress tools


• Source Control


• Data generators


• Productivity tools


• Add-ons and enhancements


• Visual Studio Team System


• Many, many more

All very impressive exept for a little naggy feeling that maybe it was sign that something wasn't quite right with the way we build software in that we need more and more tools

An opinion echoed in a blog by a programmer struggling with productivity
For his "one page" web application he needed

• ASP.NET 2.0 framework classes


• ASP.NET AJAX (.NET 3.5 FCL)


• ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (Tab and Hover controls)


• .NET 3.5 Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) framework classes


• Visual Studio 2008 IDE


• C#


• JavaScript


• VBScript


• CSS


• HTML


• XML


• MDbg CLR Managed Debugger (mdbg) Sample application and API framework


• .NET 2.0 Winforms framework classes


• Microsoft Agent SDK (API framework)


• Microsoft Remote Desktop Web Connection Active X component


• Google Earth application


• Google Earth Airlines ActiveX web plug-in for Google Earth with JavaScript API


• Prototype.js open source AJAX framework


• IronPython 2.0B2 and Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) with IronRuby support


• IronPythonTextbox – open source IronPython rich client text box and interpreter


• Edit Area – open source JavaScript source code editor with syntax highlighting


• Color List Box – open source WinForms modified List Control


• Joshua – open source interactive JavaScript HTML console window


• RealWorldGrid – open source ASP.NET modified GridView control

Thats an awful lot of technology to learn and master

( and install ! )

and test...