Conventional programmer will code their way to the end of the project, but new Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 allows developer to "drag and draw" their application from start till the end! They call it Rapid Application Development. Programmer from Borland Delphi in the old days already familiar with RAD programming, but until Microsoft replaced them with the powerful Dataset Designer, Form Designer and other visual tools, most of them switch to Visual Studio, and I am one of the Delphi developers.

From my experience with Visual Studio 2005, you can write code 500% faster than another conventional programmer with the help of visual inheritance, form designer and dataset designer. Some developer still relied on code generation tools such as CodeSmith to generate Insert, Update and Delete stored procedure for SQL server, and certainly data access code in Visual Studio!

The biggest problem for RAD programming not common between Visual Studio 2005 developers is lack of documentation and tutorial... and VS2008 has improved this weakness. Now you can find lots of video tutorial and web demos showing you how to code your software in RAD style; I predict the RAD programming will be become very popular in the next 3 years.

RAD will work very well because its' utility has become to mature through the time, and developer can lower the development cost and deliver the project faster. If you don't believe me, try it yourself, compare the "coding style" and "drawing style", definitely you will agree with me that: Let the tools code for you always the fastest way.

There are many sample source codes out there on the Internet, visit Microsoft blog or just simply enter "Rapid Application Development for VB.Net" into Google, you should find lots of tutorial and information showing you how to code in "drawing style"... Why not use the tools that you already paid to do the job for you? Do coding the smart way, not the hard way.

For your information: Visual Studio 2008 added many cool features, you can now do 3-tier programming easier than before! and the Microsoft Synchronization framework for ADO.Net brings RAD into offline application; You can use the software offline and upload any pending updates that you make during offline into the server by batch, very cool feature! And The best part, you can do that RAD all the way...

(C) Copyright 2008 CYNICS SOFTWARE - Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety as long as all links and author resources box in place.

Get a sample copy of True RAD coding - The General Ledger Source Code from Cynics Software, see the RAD power yourself and I guarantee you won't want to go back any more!

Tags: google, microsoft, 3 years, data access, video tutorial, inheritance, access code, delphi, source codes, internet visit, rapid application development