ALT.NET represents a community of thought leaders with a call to action of improving the status quo of how software is developed in the Microsoft developer ecosystem. ALT.NET encourages very strict adherence to agile practices such as BDD (Behavior Driven Development) and tools that map to those practices fairly closely. The result is that they have historically recommend open-source solutions such as NHibernate, Structure Map and Castle’s Monorail over Microsoft’s platform solutions. How has Microsoft responded at this crossroads? The answer has been is to become part of the community itself. As a result, several efforts have spawned throughout the company which are taking ALT.NET feedback and translating it into action. This includes providing better integration with open-source solutions, and supporting leading-edge ways to develop software.

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