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What are the different ways to create two very similar software packages in C# [closed]

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I am writing a software suite which is essentially composed of two separate applications in C# .Net using WPF. Although they may look a little bit different they essentially work like a lite version and a full version of the same software package. The full version contains all of the functionality of the lite version.
I had previously done this by creating two separate applications which share a class library where all the common user controls go. But i am now wondering if there is any better design for this kind of architecture.
I was even thinking of creating one application and at runtime let it decide which version it was going to work as.
Could anyone with any experience with this type of problem please point me in the right direction.

Keep it Simple
My rule of thumb is whenever possible keep solution as simple as possible. That being said I would use the same composition you are using.
Usually break up projects like this:
Application Logic: CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Core, CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Data...etc.
Applications : CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.ApplicationType.App, so some examples :
CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Web.App
CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Console.App
CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Wcf.App
Since you have two Wcf Apps might want to do something like
CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Wcf.Lite.App
CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Wcf.App
So in this example both CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Wcf.App and CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Wcf.Lite.App point back to CompanyPrefix.ProjectPrefix.Core or wherever your business logic is.
About Dynamically Loading Assemblies
There is a way to dynamically load your libraries at runtime, but unless you're dealing with a modularized system of independent components would recommend against it.
If your heart is set on it there are a lot of resources on MSDN, would probably start here. Article about loading assembly into current application domain.
Come Up with a Checklist
One thing I find helpful is to come up with a checklist to help me make decisions in case I ever get stuck. Usually ends up being something like:
Does this have business value?
Does this make debugging harder?
What are the Pros and Cons of doing it a new way versus the way I have done this in the past?
This isn't my exhaustive list but explains the point. This can really help too when you have a group of people that are largely sticking with choices for personal reasons that don't have any grounding, as well as a tool to use when you get stuck to make a decision and go with it
Dealing with Application Logic Changing (Write Clean Code)
Coming up with an over-complicated "never need to recompile entire application again" is a mistake I have made in the past. You're still going to need to deploy and compile something.
Most important thing about dealing with changes in application is to
Have Code on Source Control (most important)
Write Clean Code
Write Tests
Write Documentation ( I know no one likes to do this )
Write some more Tests
What will consume most of your time when dealing with application changes is debugging so focus on reducing the amount of time you spend debugging not a amount of time you spend compiling and deploying
For Deployment setup Continuous Integration
If you have the ability to setting up CI would eliminate 99% of the hassle of changing the application. You lose a day or two setting things up for the first time, but it is well worth it.
Check out TeamCity and Travis CI

How do small programming teams work in C# .NET? [closed]

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What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
How has your team solved this?

See this previously asked question:
Multiple Programmers in Software Development. How do we work on the same code and ensure it is always updated?
There are a lot of good answers to this question, and they apply to small and large teams.
For source control, we use Svn with the Tortoise SVN client. We've used other source control systems in the past, and have found this one to be the best for our needs.

I would recommend you use SVN for source code management, if you are using visual studio you can get numerous plugins for IDE integration.
http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://www.visualsvn.com/ = SVN Server & VS Integration
Try to set up Continuous Integration for this you can use Cruise Control .Net or Hudson. Cruise control can be set up to do a build on each check in and the history is shown on a web page.
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Welcome+to+CruiseControl.NET
http://hudson-ci.org/
For requesting new functionality you could use a ticketsing system, wiki or Google Wave any one of these should enable you to keep track of requirements.
Hope this helps.

You can pretty much use any tools for small development teams you wish. There are lots of options.
Personally, my team uses SVN for code, and Trac for tracking - mostly because it's very cost effective for a small team. However, there's nothing C#/.NET specific about that setup.
If your team has MSDN subscriptions, you might want to consider Team Foundation Server. It has many features for integration with Visual Studio that are (arguably) superior to some of the alternatives.

You should use one of the many available source control repositories. Trust me, you won't know what you did without it :)

There are plugins for Visual Studio for working on a team, but personally I've never used them.
I've done team projects with both Subversion and Mercurial... just make sure to check in the solution and project files, and all related code.
Everyone will also need to be running the same version of Visual Studio.
For requesting new functionality, you might want to consider an external solution like Trac or Bitbucket or some other free system that includes issue tracking.

Well, how small? I work on a team of 5, and we communicate well with IM, or just dropping by and talking. That being said, the team is pretty responsible, so you can trust everyone to carry their weight. I would suggest you use subversion for source control if your company doesn't have anything.

We're a team of 3 C# developers.
For version control, we use AnkhSVN, an open source SVN client that integrates with Visual Studio.
For project management, issue tracking and feature requests, we use Redmine.

What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
Mercurial -- once you've used a DVCS, it's hard to imagine going back. Everybody uses their own favorite editor; usually, that's Emacs, which comes with support for many VCSs, including Mercurial.
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
Changes are tracked in version control. You can look at the changesets as you pull them, or browse the web interface. Or just ask people at lunch what you're working on -- no developer is an island. New functionality is tracked, along with bugs, in the bug tracker.
How has your team solved this?
We're a small team using C#, but nothing here is specific to C# or small teams. I've used very similar systems with other size teams, and other languages/platforms.

We have a team of three and currently use Source Gear Vault for source control and Fogbugz for bug/feature tracking. Source Gear integrates into Visual Studio nicely and works over http which makes it easy to access from anywhere. Check ins and outs can be done directly in Visual Studio or a standalone client.
Source Gear also integrates with Fogbugz.
Used to use Visual Source safe and would never go back...

I work on a small team of 1-5, depending on the project.
What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
We use Git with Github for new projects, and TFS for some legacy work.
I see a lot of people recommending a certain provider without telling you why. I have used TFS, SourceGear, SVN (a little), and Git. I prefer Git because it stays out of my way. Git is command-line based. My typical source control workflow is a handful of simple commands, but learning those commands took a few tries.
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
We use Pivotal Tracker for story writing and organizing priority.

C# Windows Application Developer - 3rd Party Tools [closed]

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Scenario
I have recently graduated from university with a degree in Computer Science.
My degree mainly focused on C#.
I want to learn more and get better at what I do.
I notice a lot of companies always want their developers to know and use 3rd party tools.
Question
If I was developing C# Windows Forms applications, what 3rd party tools/libraries/controls etc. would be of use to me and for what reason?

The answer to this question depends on how you define "3rd party tools". I usually take that to mean products from companies other than MS but excluding free open source software. When it comes to 3rd party products (for-profit) I cannot think of any common products that I've used or been asked to learn over the last decade that I've been doing .Net development. Most MS shops I've worked with turn to MS solutions (for good or ill depending on your personal view).
That said, in recent years the number and quality of the various FOSS solutions out there has risen dramatically. I use the following whenever I can:
Logging: log4net
Inversion of Control Container (plus more): Castle Windsor
ORM: NHibernate
Unit Testing: NUnit
Mocks for unit testing: Rhino Mocks
For most of these projects there are many other options, these are just my current favorites. Learn to use these (and WHY they are needed) and you'll be many steps above the average .Net developer (sad but all to true).

The DevExpress and Telerik controls are pretty popular, but not free.

Some 3rd party .Net component providers that I've seen used in companies most often:
Telerik
Infragistics
They are not free. These kinds of providers offer large libraries of controls that you'd pick from to achieve your specific goals.

Many good suggestions here, I would also add a few other categories of tools:
Software configuration management/version control: CVS, Subversion, Git/Mercurial/Bazaar, Perforce, etc. Good use of SCM is essential for professional software development.
Issue tracking: Bugzilla, Trac, FogBugz, etc. I would also consider an issue tracking system to be a critical piece of software.
Documentation: Like it or not, it becomes very handy to know your way around Microsoft Word. Knowing how to manipulate styles, headings, numberings, cross-references, etc. can make your life a lot easier when writing documentation.

You'd probably want to have a look at Silverlight. It's a Microsoft alternative to Flash and uses C#. WPF are also something to look at for interfacing.
It might also be worthwhile looking at MOSS.

I've always liked the Xceed controls. In a lot of cases you could always build your own controls. The biggest advantage to using some of these packages is that it saves you the time and they have also been well tested (if not by the company then by the people that are using them).
I've used a couple of different packages over the years and found that if you can use one it's not that hard to use another. The biggest thing is knowing what is available out there so you don't spend two weeks building something that you could have just paid a few hundred dollars for.

You should know about resharper (helper for VS)
Crystal reports - for reports,
Some Grid tools (google it, there are many - I wouldn't bother to learn until need one)
and study advanced topics like: WCF, WPF
Cruise control or other building tool, bugnet or trac - bug management tools...
And of course - AQtime or other Profiling tools.

.NET Reflector
Hawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor
Infragistics

I'd throw mono in there as well. Since you're looking to give yourself an advantage over other developers and improve your value to companies - having cross platform experience is advantageous as well.

There are a lot of 3rd party controls that will help you achieve more in less time. But I don't think many of them will really improve your coding skills (calling someone else to do all the work doesn't teach you much about how to actually do thise things yourself, but familiarity with them and the ability to learn new libraries is a good skill to practice)
Resharper is good for improving your coding skills (code analysis), coding style (autoformatting), and it's a great refactoring tool. It's expensive, though.
Microsoft do some free code analysis tools for Visual Studio (FXCop for code analysis, and there is also a Static Analysis addin) which will help improve your code quality.
AtomineerUtils (my own addin) encourages excellence in documentation and generally improves your code quality (by encouraging good naming style, etc)

Focus more on the tools used in the software development process. Enterprise Architect is used for designing applications from a high level. Once you design you application's business classes you can generate your classes' skeletons. You will be responsible for you code implementation once the class structure has been created.
For implementation purposes look at several C# platforms mentioned earlier. You want to focus Microsoft's WPF, WCF, WF. WPF is ok but it can not be used prior to .net 3.0 so check your client's requirements. I'm working on a project that targets the .net 2.0 because of restrictions by the client so the applicaiton was designed in WinForms. Silverlight is an option as well.
In addition, read up on design patterns as this will help you avoid creating high maintenance applications. A good book is Design Patterns in C#.
For testing look at the Visual Studio TFS system or third party programs like NUnit. You can google NUnit. This will help you ensure that your code does what you intended it to do on a granular scale.
Also, take a look at some of the source control software avaialbel like Subversion, Rational ClearCase, Visual SourceSafe. For large projects with multiple developers you'll need a source control tool that has multiple branches so that each developer has his or her own sandbox within the source control system.

I'm a big proponent of ComponentOne and use it in my new applications regularly. I find that if you're proficient in .NET winforms in general, C1 are very easy to pick up on and usually do what you want with little effort.
A couple people mentioned Telerik. I demoed it fairly extensively and found them to be a bit more complicated because they contain a ton of configuration options for look and feel. Awesome if you're some sort of graphic designer, but unless you're building the next Windows Media Player, I think it's overkill. The learning curve for the theming seemed a bit much for what I was trying to accomplish.
C1 and Telerik both run about $1000 to $1300 depending on what license you get.
You should also check out the Krypton toolkit. It free and has a lot of nice controls.

Does ReSharper require experience before getting it? [closed]

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I have about 4-5 years of background in programming some in C# and some in C++. I recently got an internship and have been using C# daily. I am confident in my work, and don't have any problem remembering syntax or anything like that. So I was wondering what you think about getting resharper? I was going to demo it first but I just want to hear other opinions about it. Basically what I'm trying to ask is, should I wait to get it and become more experienced and have more practice with just Visual studios and its built in intellisense and stuff or would it be alright to get it?

I wouldn't work without it. It duplicates a bunch of the Visual Studio stuff, and adds a whole lot more. It simply improves Visual Studio, and will not impair your learning c# at all.

I'm a developer that has been using C# since .net 1.0 days on a daily basis, I usually likes to keep to the bare bones of an installation, so that if my dev environment is somehow destroyed I can be back and running as fast as possible. However, I recently did some pairing with another developer which required installing Resharper. What I found was:
I learnt alot about C# features I never new existed.
It had a much better test runner than VS.
Had much better refactoring tools.
About the only thing I didn't like was that it rearranged some of the default VS keyboard shortcuts, however after a bit of tinkering in the options dialog I was able to turn off the features I didn't need.
I'm missing it now, after the trial. I'm unfortunately unable to afford the cost of a licence (cash flow problem, not a it isn't worth it problem) at present and can't convince my bosses to get it for me.

Make a point of trying out Refactor Pro and CodeRush during your research as an alternative to Resharper. Together they're an unstoppable productivity machine. I used them for years when I developed in C# and working without them feels like I'm missing an extra me. :-)
For sure you should look into both products, though. It's not about remembering syntax, it's about reducing the number of coding errors that everyone makes all the time.

I can tell you from my experience that no matters how solid are your skills ReSharper is quite addictive, and it's a great enhancement for C# programming in VS. In fact the addiction comes from the fact that it can really make you save a lot of time otherwise spent doing tedious tasks and at the same time it'll help you write clean code which turns in less time spent refactoring (which is made faster by ReSharper anyway).
If properly configured, it can be - in my opinion - the most valuable VS addin and I couldn't really see why you should deny yourself access to that :)

Well worth the money, particularly if you can get your company to buy it for you. I theoretically could work without it, but I wouldn't want to.

Resharper is like learning piano chords and then being able to play any song you hear. You can write code the "wrong" way, highlight some of it, do a key combination, and clean it up.
v4.5 makes huge strides in performance as well. Some big solutions would get bogged down, but this one is a lot snappier. It's solid top to bottom.

Home Automation Library [closed]

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I'm a C# developer looking to get into home automation as a hobby. I have done a little research, but was wondering if anyone knows of a good .NET library that supports Insteon hardware. I'd rather use Insteon than X10 due to reliability issues.
My ultimate objective at this point is to have a simple home automation server (maybe lights and climate control) with a secure ASP.NET web application interface. I'm more interested in actually building it and learning about it rather than finding an existing solution.
Thanks for any suggestions or comments.
Edit:
Thanks for the help, everyone.
Does anyone have experience with Z-wave technology? Seems promising - appears to be higher quality hardware, includes a core library, supports .NET, etc. ControlThink appears to have a pretty good controller and SDK.
Here's an interesting application to consider: Stall Status: Know Before You Go

We found there really wasn't much developer support for Insteon unless you wanted to buy their SDK and agree to their rather heavy-handed license agreement. Rather than go that route, we wrote our own .NET library called FluentDwelling and we open-sourced it. You can find a download link, and some get-you-started code samples if you follow that link.
The source code comes with a full suite of unit tests (requires NUnit, also free), so you can add improvements and make changes if you like.

I would avoid X10 like the plague. Between things like modern TV's and power strips, bridged power junction boxes and just plain strange wiring, X10 signals tend to just "disappear" and never get to their destination.
If you really want to give X10 a shot, I've got a box of X10 stuff in the garage that was worth $250+ new and it's all completely useless in my house, so you can have it. Some of it worked in my old house, but it won't so much as turn a light on 2 outlets away where I live now.
X10 is viewed by most modern electronics as "noise" on the line (which, technically, it is) and something to be filtered out rather than passed along or left alone.

I can't remember if it covers the specific technologies you mention but you should definately check out this episode of .NET Rocks. They talk about all the different stuff you can do with home automation and a lot about how to do it. I believe one of the main points was that Microsoft Robotics Studio was a good tool to use, as it uses a lot of the same abstractions as you would otherwise use.

I know it's been a long time since this post was made, however I was wondering if you'd picked a route, and what you've ended up doing with home automation since.
I've been doing this kind of stuff with many of the technologies available, but I've always done it on top of a product called homeseer. .net plug-ins and vb.net and c# scripting can be done on top of this foundation. I've been thinking of rolling my own similar to what you were describing. Any thoughts, tips, decisions you've made etc?

A bit off topic, but listen to the latest episode of dot net rocks, one of the finalists of my .net story built an home automation solution that really made me want to dive into home automation again.
Totally awsome solution.
http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=518

I think this would bee a place to start
insteon sdk

Some research via Google looking for an Insteon SDK only yields stuff from way back in 2005. There's only information on serial port interfaces (no USB) and the only language mentioned is something called DockLight scripting that also looks like it hasn't been updated since 2005.
X10, on the other hand, boasts support for C++, VisualBasic, VB Script, and JavaScript. No .Net listed, but VisualBasic/VB Script likely implies a COM object you can easily import for use in C#. They're also much more USB friendly, and the kit costs 1/4 of the Insteon kit ($50 vs $200).
If you were actually building a product I would understand the reliability concern. But since this is a home project I think you'll have much better luck with X10.

you can try C-bus by Clipsal(schneider) it's free.