If you ask me, when it comes tools for writing automated build scripts nothing packs more bang for the buck than Rake. Until recently, using Rake to build .net solutions required a magic concoction of hacked together scripts which rarely exhibited Ruby’s appreciation for beauty nor Rake’s spirit of simplicity. Luckily our buddy Derick Bailey decided it was time to bite the bullet and start building some real Rake tasks that were special suited for building .net code. The result is Albacore. Using Rake for .net IRL I’ve been using Rake to be lazy for a while. And we, the VersionOne dudes &...

As humans we seem to have an innate desire for structure in our lives. Structure permeates through our societies; it’s found within our families, education systems, governments, etc. I suppose it’s no surprise then that we also seek to force structure upon the work that we, as software developers, do. The problem is the work we do isn’t structured. It is not deterministic. There is no grand blue print, process, nor methodology that we can follow to pay dirt. We live in a chaotic and complex world that is itself continuously changing and adapting. Software product...