Software Development Continues to Evolve

November 21, 2018 340 Views Gabriel Torok

It’s no longer enough to just make great software. Now, mobile-enabled, always-connected users demand applications capable of meeting them where they are — without sacrificing quality, performance, or protection. This means easy to use, intuitive software that’s always available, always secure, and always works, delivered at a fast cadence.

To meet these increasing expectations, 3rd party tools and solutions continue to be critical for development environments. Companies recognize the need to use a combination of in-house, open-source, and proprietary offerings to deliver competitive software on-demand.

At PreEmptive we’re continuously searching for ways to improve our development process, boost productivity, and drive best-of-breed software design. But we’re not selfish — in the spirit of the season, we’re happy to share some of our favorite tools for software development and design.

Here are some dev tools we like:

Visual Studio:

We like Visual Studio because it’s the premier IDE for .NET application development. It is highly extensible and customizable, and has a mature third party extension ecosystem. Dotfuscator supports almost all variants of .NET, created with almost any .NET language compiler (past and present), so we really like that Visual Studio supports working with all these scenarios, and that older versions of Visual Studio continue to work side-by-side with current releases.

Visual Studio Code:

We like Visual Studio Code because it is a fast, free, lightweight editor that understands many different programming languages and related artifacts; it is updated frequently, and has a thriving plugin ecosystem. Our developers use Windows, Mac, and Linux, so we also like the cross-platform support.

Xamarin:

We like Xamarin because our customers like Xamarin—it allows them to create mobile applications that target multiple platforms with one shared codebase, while still maintaining platform native look-and-feel. Protecting these applications is important to our customers!

IntelliJ:

We like IntelliJ for Java code development. Google choose it as the base of Android Studio, it gets updates often, the interface is easy to use, and the refactoring tools are great.

And even more tools we like:

LEADTOOLS

With powerful features including OCR, Barcode, Forms, PDF, Document Viewing, Image Processing, DICOM, and PACS, LEADTOOLS Imaging SDKs are designed to help programmers integrate A-Z imaging into their cross-platform applications. Let’s say you're creating Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, zero-footprint medical viewers, or audio/video media streaming servers across multiple platforms and devices. LEADTOOLS has you covered with native libraries for Android, Apple, Linux and .NET along with new consumption-based Web API in LEADTOOLS Cloud Services.

Mobilize.Net

Mobilize.Net’s AI-driven code migration tools Mobilize.Net’s AI-driven code migration tools reduce the cost and time to modernize valuable legacy client-server applications. Convert VB6 code to .NET or even a modern web application. Move PowerBuilder to Angular and ASP.NET Core or Java Spring. Automated migration tools cut time, cost, and risk from legacy modernization projects.

DocuSign

Need simple eSignature integration? Building out a multifaceted and secure workflow? DocuSign APIs and tools can help. Tools include new C# SDK with .NET Core 2.0 support and a Quick Start API code example for C# — complete with a comprehensive installation and demonstration video. Along with C#, DocuSign offers open source SDKs for PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, and Node.js. With more than 400 endpoints and a free developer sandbox, this eSignature API gives companies everything they need to build out secure eSign environments.

Docker

Need containers? Get Docker Enterprise. Used by millions of developers — and offering support for both Windows Servers and Linus distributions, Docker provides the ideal way to seamlessly integrate container solutions. First time using containers? Check out the Modernizing .NET Apps for Developer series. Already an expert? Then get started with Docker by downloading .

CData

With real-time SQL-92 connectivity to more than 100+ SaaS, NoSQL, and Big Data sources, CData Software has earned its reputation as the leading Drivers and Adapters provider for data integration. Using standards such as ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, and ODATA, CData Software helps virtualize data access, reduce data integration complexities and provide real-time access for BI, ETL and other reporting tools. It’s simple: use CData to write SQL and get data — from anywhere!

Progress

From the creator of Telerik .NET and Kendo UI JavaScript user interface components/controls comes Progress, offering everything developers need to build high-performing modern web, mobile, and desktop applications and user interfaces. Along with cutting-edge tools to create, mobile and desktop apps efficiently, Progress also empowers companies to develop and deploy modern chatbot experiences across their applications.

Twilio

The future of business communications has arrived: Twilio enables developers to easily embed phones, VoIP, and messaging tools into web, desktop, and mobile software. The best part? Twilio takes care of care of complex telecommunications hardware in addition to delivering globally-available cloud API that developers can leverage to create cutting-edge communications systems. And since Twilio automatically scales as your app usage shifts up or down, you only pay for what you use.

It's time again for the #CodeParty

It’s happening Tuesday, Dec. 4: DevIntersection and #MSFTConnect() overlap and #PreEmptive and other are sponsoring the #CodeParty. Check out the link for speakers and sessions — it’s a treasure trove of content for developers and IT pros.

MSFTConnect is an online-only event, but DevIntersection is happening at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. But when the events finish up at 5:30, head on over to the CodeParty twitch channel for another hilarious and prize-filled stream of geek weirdness and trivia questions.

Sweetening the deal is some high-quality swag you can only get by answering the trivia questions on the Twitch chat stream — we'll be giving away a couple of Surface Go laptops, gift certificates to Amazon, an Xbox and a bunch of other cool stuff.

Don’t miss out!

Xamarin Apps Get Second Major Security Boost With Dotfuscator Pro 4.39

Dotfuscator Pro 4.39 includes MUCH simpler Xamarin Project integration and Anti-tamper and Rooted device controls for Xamarin.Android

Dotfuscator 4.39, available for download, now includes Anti-tamper controls for Xamarin.Android. This feature adds to the growing list of run-time detection and response features that have rapidly emerged as standard controls required for every Android app processing sensitive information or secure transactions.

This release comes less than three weeks after Version 4.38 dramatically simplified the configuration of Dotfuscator within Xamarin projects and just a few months after Dotfuscator added Rooted Device detection and defense controls.

Time is of the essence for application security — the sooner IT teams can detect potential attacks and the longer it takes cybercriminals to crack app code, the better your business outcomes.

But with hackers adapting to overcome infosec efforts and new software vulnerabilities constantly emerging, how do companies gain more time — and give hackers less time — across their application stack?

It all starts with a change in direction: Security needs to shift left.

Hotel chain Marriott International isn’t having a good week: As reported by The New York Times, the company announced that its reservation database for Starwood-branded properties had been hacked. The numbers aren’t great, with initial data suggesting that 500 million guest records have been compromised across records dating back to 2014.

The result? This is a bigger breach than the recent Equifax debacle, catapulting it to spot on the “biggest breaches of all-time list” behind Yahoo’s three billion compromised accounts in 2017. It’s a sobering reminder that even large organizations with substantial security resources still face the specter of data breaches, but also raises an important question: What (if anything) can companies do to limit their risk of becoming the next hacked-network newsmaker?

Entity Framework is an object-relational mapping (ORM) framework used in Xamarin, WPF, ASP.NET and many other types of .NET applications. It greatly simplifies the code that a developer typically needs to write for database access and querying.

Entity Framework pairs the names of database tables to the names of model types in source code that are used to generate the tables. These names must stay consistent for the application to function properly. This means that when performing renaming obfuscation on these sections of code, we must exclude the model types from renaming.