Software Engineering Principles and Practices

Articles covering the principles, practices, and methodologies of professional software development – from clean code and architecture to testing, design patterns, and modern development processes.

Practical insights for developers at all levels who want to build maintainable, scalable, and high-quality software.

.NET Job Scheduling — Coravel and Fluent Simplicity

Coravel prioritizes developer velocity with fluent APIs, zero infrastructure, and integrated features like queuing and caching. Understand when convenience and rapid iteration trump persistence and clustering for practical application development.

.NET Job Scheduling — Quartz.NET for Enterprise Scale

Quartz.NET provides advanced scheduling semantics, database-backed clustering, and flexible storage for systems demanding complex workflows. Understand when enterprise features justify operational complexity and how Quartz.NET scales across distributed deployments.

.NET Job Scheduling — Hangfire and Persistent Reliability

Hangfire combines persistent job storage, automatic retries, and real-time monitoring to simplify background processing. Learn when database-backed reliability matters and how Hangfire scales from single instances to distributed workers.

.NET Job Scheduling — The Landscape

Explore the spectrum of .NET job scheduling from lightweight in-memory solutions to enterprise-grade distributed systems. Understand which approach fits your operational model and why background processing architecture matters.

.NET 10 Testing: Microsoft Finally Fixed the Test Runner (Mostly)

.NET 10 replaces VSTest with Microsoft.Testing.Platform, bringing SDK-integrated testing with faster discovery, consistent behavior across environments, and explicit configuration contracts. But it requires .NET 10, breaks old test adapters, and demands CI pipeline discipline. Here’s what actually changes, who should migrate now, and who should wait.

Code Metrics and Configuration: Beyond the Numbers Game

Code metrics have become a standard feature in modern development environments, yet their implementation and interpretation often leave much to be desired. While Visual Studio and .NET provide comprehensive code metrics analysis, the way these metrics are configured, presented, and (more critically) acted upon reveals a fundamental disconnect between measurement and meaningful improvement.

What code metrics actually measure, how to configure them properly, and (more importantly) why blindly following thresholds without understanding context is, frankly, a recipe for misguided refactoring efforts that waste your team’s time and actively damage your codebase.

.NET 10 and the Release Cycle Paradox

.NET’s yearly rhythm has become a symbol of stability — yet also a source of pressure. The release cycle paradox describes the tension between predictability and exhaustion: a release schedule that keeps the ecosystem healthy, but teams constantly catching up.

With .NET 10 on the horizon, developers must learn to navigate this rhythm rather than fight it.

Stop Breaking Multi-Targeting Builds with String Comparisons

String-based TargetFramework conditions fail silently in multi-targeting builds. IsTargetFrameworkCompatible() understands framework semantics and prevents production nightmares.

Modern Defensive Programming in .NET — Unified Throw-Helpers and Multi-Framework Compatibility

Modern .NET introduces powerful throw-helper methods such as ArgumentNullException.ThrowIfNull and ArgumentException.ThrowIfNullOrEmpty to simplify defensive programming. However, many projects still target older frameworks where these APIs are missing. This article explores how the NetEvolve.Arguments library delivers a unified, backward-compatible API that brings modern guard clause patterns to every .NET version, ensuring consistent validation, maintainability, and multi-framework compatibility.

Stop Parsing the Same String Twice: CompositeFormat in .NET

Every time you call string.Format() with the same format string, .NET parses it again. And again. And again. CompositeFormat changes that: parse once, reuse forever. The result? Up to 30% faster formatting, fewer allocations, and a one-line code change. Here’s why this matters and how to use it.

Clean Code: A Lip Service, Not a Standard

Clean Code is often praised but rarely practiced effectively. This article explores how misunderstood ideals and over-engineering harm .NET systems, how to recognize such failures early, and which C# best practices and official guidelines truly support maintainable software.

ConstantExpectedAttribute: Unlocking Performance Through Compiler Awareness

The ConstantExpectedAttribute, introduced in .NET 7, provides a powerful mechanism to signal compiler expectations about constant values. This enables better performance optimizations, enhanced IDE tooling, and clearer API contracts. Learn how to leverage this attribute to build more efficient and maintainable .NET applications.