Previously I mentioned the AJAX.NET library from Microsoft – I thought I’d add that this is an open source – that’s right, open source – project from the Redmond Giant. Works in Firefox, because it’s all JavaScript, baby. At least, enough of it is to matter. The tool is available at http://ajax.asp.net/

Last week I was listening to Jack Greenfield on .Net Rocks! discussing software factories. Jack views software factories beyond mere code reuse, but extending to controls, tools, etc. He states that he believes, and I agree with him on this, that developers are hell-bent-for-leather to build everything from scratch every time, and that we have to learn to use tools to free us to build bigger and better things instead of re-inventing the wheel every time. This caused me to think about my own approach...

Most of us developers - in fact, all of us - have written some rotten code at some point. Some people learn quickly how to improve their code, improve architecture, whatever, but even today my first pass at code often gets improved by the time I finish a project - and I don't know of any code I've ever written that I might not be able to improve if I took another shot at it later. Years ago, programming was a side hobby - I was a graphic artist and illustrator. I'm not going to go into the details...