Team Foundation Build or TeamCity?

Question

We are a mostly MS shop at work doing .NET LOB development. We also use MS Dynamics for our CRM app... all the devs are currently using VS/SQL Server 2008. We also use VSS, but

Answer 1

MS is years behind in the TDD/CI area

Being one who has TDD'd for 4 years now you are correct. MS is still not even promoting it nor do they offer tools that work well with the TDD flow.

Don't get stuck dealing with Visual Studio for any kind of automation, source control, or agile workflow period (stop using TFS please!!). That stuff even though they say is "new" is monolithic and always comes with weird issues and bloat. It is always painful.

I've used Team City and it's simply amazing, things work, it's designed for usability, and it's simply designed well and compatible with most all test tools, etc. Fine use Visual Studio for code, nothing else. Look for external and open source tools to help build a better CI. The "you can do everything right in VS" sell is not selling, and it's not working. People nowdays are used to and always combining different tools from the outside to get things done. Relying on all MS toolsets is just not the way to go IMO for .NET. MS likes to sell "hey you can just do everything right here". But you end up with nothing but pain when you go that route and drink their koolade (TFS, MS Fakes, etc.).

If you plan on doing TDD, you definitely don't want to be using all MS tools. You'll either be pushed down "their way" of doing things which is often proprietary and/or bloated when you try to TDD with their tools or be totally restrictive. For TDD you need to be able to have some flexibility and choices when you decide to layer in different test frameworks, assertion libraries, etc.

Add Octopus on top of Team City, and it's stellar...you will simply fall in love with it as developer or for anyone doing DevOps.

Stop trying to rely on Microsofts continued failure at agile tool offerings

Start looking outside the box and try new things is what I keep repeating to the .NET world, me being a .NET developer in the past and who has tried new things outside the MS world.