Visual Studio 2003 to 2005 Application Conversion

My first Visual Studio (VS) 2003 to 2005 C# application conversion went pretty smoothly. Time required: 90 minutes. The application is a data processing, automation utility I use for report writing on a healthcare information system.

New feature I like: VS 2005 supports basic XP refactoring (rename, extract method, encapsulate field, extract interface, promote local variable to parameter, remove & reorder parameters).

For the past year I've focused on writing code in a hierchical database language called Magic. I didn't realize all the generic concepts I'd learned til I stepped into this C# code from a year ago. Reading Martin Fowler's book on Refactoring has, as he promised made me a better programmer already.

// Automatic Build and Copy
if(chkAutomaticBuildCopy.Checked==true)
{
RegWriter.WriteRegistryInfo("AutomaticBuildCopy", "true");
}
else
{
RegWriter.WriteRegistryInfo("AutomaticBuildCopy", "false");
}

The code above & below demonstrates just one of many of things I'll now refactor and do just a little differently:

// Automatic Build and Copy
strRegistryKey = "AutomaticBuildCopy";
RegWriter.WriteRegistryInfo(strRegistryKey, chkAutomaticBuildCopy.Checked.ToString());

The Extract Method in VS 2005 is pretty good, but not perfect. Variables not needed due to refactoring were included as unnecessary parameters when I performed the Extract Method routine. You still have to know what you are doing.


So far I really enjoy refactoring code in VS 2005!