It’s all about the metrics

Nah, nothing can replace raw talent, experience/instinct and being focused on constantly learning and improving. Metrics are merely one of many ways to amplify the power of these qualities. A GPS is useless if you don’t know how to drive or if you don’t even know where you should be going. With that caveat stated, let me introduce you to NDepend, a one of a kind analysis tool in the .NET realm.

NDepend allows you to easily and quickly have a 10,000 feet overview of your solution and at the same time, drill down to those little details that can stop you dead in your tracks. This is by no mean an easy feat and is part of why software architecture is challenging to say the least. It is thus a paradox that it is one area that is lagging behind. Fortunately, NDepend has over the years become more and more efficient at filling that role. The combination of sound visualization techniques and a flexible query system allows it to present a lot information without overwhelming its user (unfortunately, its default UI does overwhelm, so you need to trim it down). Showing you all that NDepend can do would be both redundant (see links at end) and futile as its power is only limited by your ingenuosity.

Clearly, it is one of those tools that either work wonders or lead to disasters. It’s all about how you use the metrics.

Some places to learn more about NDepend:

• NDepend web site which is flowing with documentation;
• Patrick Smacchia’s blog (the author of NDepend);
• NDepend: code metrics at your service;
• Educating Programmers with Placemats – NDepend Static Analysis Poster;

Another tool of note is Lattix, which also supports Java, databases and many other project types. It is not as powerful as NDepend, but comes in very handy for anything not .NET related.