Practical Tools and Techniques for Software Development: A Computer Science/Information Technology Curriculum Companion

A short text, now in it's second edition, to introduce computer science/information technology students to practical tools and techniques. These include version control, debugging, build tools, development methodologies, requirements, and more. Each is discussed at a level that should give a student a good foundation to build upon. Knowledge of these tools should supplement their classical education and hopefully give them an advantage when job hunting.

Mr. Crookshanks has been teaching on a part-time basis since 2003, both at an institutional level as an Adjunct Professor and as a Certified Trainer. As an Adjunct Professor he taught undergraduate courses in Visual C++, VB.NET, networking and network design. He also advised a new curriculum based on open source tools and products including Java, MySQL, Apache, and others. After becoming a Microsoft Certified Trainer in 2005 Mr. Crookshanks delivered various Microsoft Official Curriculum courses including those on C#, ASP.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and SQL Server programming. He has instructed and performed development on diverse platforms in addition to Microsoft including Java and Java Servlets, PHP, Apache, Tomcat, Android, and Objective-C programming for the iPhone. Active in the local development community, he participates and occasionally presents to the local developer’s guild. Professionally, Mr. Crookshanks has over 15 years of experience in software development for component-based systems, primarily in the design and implementation of business logic and data components, databases, and the integration of those components with web-based and desktop applications.