What are the most active 25 Open Source Projects

Yes, I intentionally left out that I am referring to the top 25 on Microsoft's CodePlex:-) I know that there are many active Open Source projects beyond CodePlex that have been around longer than CodePlex but this link at eWeek lists the most active 25 Open Source Projects at Microsoft's CodePlex so I wanted to share it:

 

https://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,1206,a=213883,00.asp

 

When you look at the above link, you see many projects related to our Patterns & Practices group at Microsoft. This group has been around for a few years and is heavily focused on customer input, quite often through the CodePlex projects.

 

If you haven't spent time looking at the Patterns & Practice content, I highly recommend that you do so. I get a lot of questions from customers like "What's the best way to add logging to an application?", "How should I manage exceptions?", or (most importantly) "How do I build secure applications in .NET?" All of these questions can be answered for most situations by looking at the Enterprise Library. Also, our security guidance is very good and I highly recommend taking a look:

 

https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/security/default.aspx

 

If anything, there is so much information covering the various aspects of application development that it can be a bit overwhelming to wade through. Some of the documentation can be broad but there really is a lot of step-by-step / prescriptive guidance in there. For example, here is a link to the Security "How To" documentation for ASP.NET 2.0:

 

https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms978512.aspx#securityhowtosindex_aspnet2

 

If you are looking for specific guidance around security and the .NET Platform but can't find it, please leave me a comment or click the email link to the left to reach me.

 

Thanks
-Rob Cameron