Leveraging the Community

One thing any .NET developer should be aware of, is that the .NET ecosystem is much bigger and not limited to the .NET Framework itself. There are literally thousands of open source libraries and components available for your perusal.

Those who are aware of this vast ecosystem often ask themselves the same questions:

• How do I know if there already is a suitable solution available?
• Where can I find it?
• How do I install it?
• How do I configure it properly?
• How do I know there is a newer version available?

Usually, this meant searching the web for the best solution, try to find your way through different blog posts, discussion forums, project sites and hopefully some documentation as well, and eventually pulling some source code or compiled libraries for reference in your projects. The adventure is just beginning! How do you know what to reference? Do I reference all libraries or only some of them? How do I use these libraries?