NDepend review

Lately I have spent a bit of time with NDepend, who contacted me if I wanted a free license, in exchange for a blogpost. This was actually great timing on their part, as I was already thinking about giving it another go. Being completely honest I tried NDepend some years ago, and at the time I simply didn't know where to start and where I would get the most value from using such a tool. So back then I pretty much wrote it off, but have again and again heard good things from other developers who are using it.

My first thought when I ran NDepend this time around was that a lot had changed. The first thing that met me was a wizard for analysing a project, so I pointed it at my current project. This was the point I got derailed the first time I tried NDepend, because I remember being met by the code metric view which does look kind of scary - especially being new to a tool like this. Now however I was met by a dashboard, that is still complex, but a vast improvement since it gives a pretty good idea of some of the power that NDepend provides. I still can't help think that the tool could gain a lot by providing simpler guides through some key usecases though.

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