Going to try to make up for some lost time here, as this new project is taking up a good deal of my time. OK, not exactly true initially, as it took a full week to get the access I needed, but now I have my environment set up, and I submitted my Functional Specification Document for the project for review. Technically I am not supposed to begin coding until mid-October, but I don't think the Technical Document will take nearly that long, so I am creating some prototypes in the mean time to foster some discussion of some of the changes I am making.

So I am going to post some WinForm related tips, simply because that's what I have been working. I have a long list of things I wanted to write about though, so who knows what will end up here while I have the energy to do so.

As I review this project, I came across a lot of things I would love to change. For example, everywhere there is data access code, they repeat the same functionality. By encapsulating that code, I could probably reduce the overall lines fo code and complexity considerably. However, I was advised not to, because changing code means more testing, and even with that, if something changed breaks, there will be Hell to pay.

Regardless if I try to take that risk, which I feel is well warranted, I also see lots of opportunities for CodeSmith templates to generate the code. It's not a big project, and it will probably take longer to write all the specifications than it will to actually code, but that's how it goes sometimes.