CSLA.NET Study Group

Roy Ogborn — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 21:39:00 GMT

Next week I begin facilitating a study group consisting of C# .NET software developers. We'll be focusing on Rockford Lhotka's CSLA.NET application framework for C#. I plan on tracking the progress of the group here, posting how we wind up organizing and distributing tasks, how well folks are participating, and our overall progress.

My intention is to have this team of software developers (who are employed by the same firm) be more productive when building custom business software by using a common application framework for each application they design.

Case in point: I've used Lhotka's pre-.NET version of CSLA on several large web applications. One of them is in use at Qwest (at least it was when I last looked) by nearly 2000 Qwest employees. Qwest was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and how bug-free I created this custom work-flow system for them. It was the underlying CSLA application framework that helped produce the great results. [That system also used what I consider to be the precursor to ASP.NET, which was VB6's webclasses, aka "IIS Application", but that's another story.]

For a multi-person team, the benefits of using a standard application framework are even greater. When everyone on the team is building different applications using whatever method each chooses, there's a huge ramp-up time for anyone joining the project. Plus the folks who later have to maintain the software systems will have no clue how any particular application works inside. When a common framework is used for every new application built, this situation improves drastically.

So stay tuned ... You'll get to follow our progress (if you so desire). Hey, and if you have any constructive comments based on your experiences, please drop me a note!

Roy