Starting C# project

Well, I was happy to start a project for my own excitement (I participated in some during last seven years for different companies though). About a year ago I found myself a new hobby – playing D&D miniatures http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/minis.

At some point it appeared that many people are consider themselves as experts (it's locally in my country, Belarus) in such topics like forming proper bands, deciding what figurer better than another, etc. I found many opinions useful for developing my playing skills. However, I thought that some mathematical/modeling background would be useful for me. And I was right – after running a few simulations I made myself much better band and won that expert who was enforcing his thought. Indeed, only modeling wouldn’t ever allow to win easily – but it helps you understanding how statistics for each figure in a specific band is laid down. Well, as any D&D played knows – if you roll the dice well, it’s much easier for you to win, but if you have a poor band – you have no chances against overwhelming opponent.

The initial idea was:
- Create an application that would allow to model different situations on D&D miniatures’ board and allow gathering statistics for different bands, maps, strategies.
- Enhance own programming and modeling skills as well as learning new technologies
- Bring myself as much joy as possible to recreate a little from leading another production project (meaning that I had not too much time for development)

I had two main choices for possible programming languages/platforms:
- Python
- .Net/C#

I spent some time programming Python 3 years ago but didn’t advance too far, honestly. Thus to improve myself I could pick Python and make everything using it.

Last 4 years (may be more, I need to check my CV for details :) ) I programmed (or leading) projects based on .NET framework. Thus I gained some skills there.

Initially I started playing with Python to evaluate how is going for me. Well, I managed to write a few simple applications but figured out that my performance wasn’t too high though. Thus I switched to .NET and started the application there.

To make myself more aware about different technologies that I had been using before I downloaded a few programs that I wasn’t used often before:
- SharpDevelop 2.1
- SVN plus TortoiseSVN
- NCoverExplorer
And more tools that I was familiar with:
- NUnit 2.9
- FXCop 1.35

So I was more or less prepared and started making the model.