Top 10 Abbreviations Every .NET Developer Should Be Familiar With

MVVM

Model View ViewModel (MVVM) is an event-driven software development architectural pattern that originated from Microsoft for use with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Based on MVC, MVVM is a time-tested and developer-approved design pattern that facilitates a clear separation of the development of the graphical user interface from the development of the business logic or back end logic known as the model. This pattern is now being implemented in other technology domains such as JavaScript's structural frameworks KnockoutJS, Kendo MVVM and Knockback.js.

TFS

Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a complex collaboration platform that covers the entire application lifecycle management and improves the development team's productivity. If offers all the tools and features needed to effectively manage software development projects such as source code management, reporting, automated builds and tests or project management for both agile and waterfall development teams. To get the most out of it and all its features, it should be used as a back-end of Visual Studio.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio (VS) is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft that is used to build applications and websites that supports a wide range of programming languages such as C, C++, C# or Visual Basic. Currently in version 2014, Visual Studio is definitely the most complex tool available that meets all the requirements for fast, productive and error-prone software development. With countless numbers of features and plugins support, you rarely need any other tool as you can rely on Visual Studio in the entire application development life cycle. It comes in various editions such as Express, Professional or Ultimate that might slightly differ across the versions.

WCF

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a flexible next-generation platform and is a new approach for building Service-Oriented Applications (SOA) within the .Net environment. With WCF, you can easily exchange asynchronous messages among the endpoints that can be hosted by IIS or in an application. It includes and supports several important features such as interoperability, service metadata, security, transactions, AJAX and REST. The architecture contains many extensibility points, so if required, the service's behavior can be customized.

WF

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a framework that enables developers to create applications that execute an ordered business process/logic also known as workflow. These workflows simplify application development by encapsulating the procedure in the workflow as so-called activities. WF provides an API, an in-process workflow engine and a rehostable designer for implementing all kinds of scenarios such as UI page flows, document-centric workflows or line-of-business (LOB) applications.

WPF

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a consistent programming model for building both standalone and browser-hosted applications that was initially released as a part of .Net Framework 3.0. WPF, as a follower of "ancient" WinForms relies on a vector-based rendering engine that is resolution-independent allowing the developers to create a visually stunning user experience. Furthermore, it separates the business logic from the user interface and uses XAML (XML-based language) to define the elements. Microsoft Silverlight is a subset of WPF. Even though it is still actively developed, it was not designed to be fully responsive so it doesn't meet all the mobile-development requirements. Not any major changes are expected in future framework versions.