Expert One-on-One™ C# Design and Development

Chapter 19. Considering Application Speed Implications

Most applications go through a series of pretests as developers put the pieces together. The development team wants to see how the pieces are going together and determine if they work well with each other. In addition, the development team wants to see whether the design is working at all. In some respects, the pretesting stage is curiosity. Most people who create something want to see how things are looking as they create it. A sculptor steps back to view a creation, a cook tastes to see how the ingredients taste together — a developer is no different.

Sometimes the pretests are more than simple curiosity, however. They serve an important purpose in making your application work as it should. The sculptor steps back and notices that part of the ear isn't formed correctly, the cook notices that the pinch of salt is missing — the developer sees that the application is lacking something that causes speed to suffer. The sculptor conforms, in some respects, to engineering standards and artistic norms, and the cook uses a recipe, but these design statements can't address the artistic part of each trade — the artist's eye and the cook's sense of taste prevail. Likewise, the seasoned developer follows the design and relies on best practices, but the pretest provides the artistic touch that defines the difference between an application that works and one that works well.

Fortunately, Microsoft provides some tools to make pretesting more ...