10 MEF’Tastic reasons to use MEF – If you’re writing your own “plugin” framework, stop now and check out MEF now (you won’t likely be sorry)

Jeremy Likness' Blog - Ten Reasons to use the Managed Extensibility Framework

“One question I'm commonly asked is, "Why do I need the Managed Extensibility Framework? How do I know when to use it?" In addition to that really being two questions, I'm not sure I can tell you the top ten reasons to use MEF or whether or not it is the right tool for you. Instead, as a hands-on consultant who has been using MEF in production applications since the earlier previews, I can share ten reasons why I've used it in my development projects and prefer it over over other frameworks.

Reason One: It's out of the box.

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I find it interesting that it seems that MEF isn’t getting more “airplay”. When I ask around the office, “You’re doing Plugin’s… Have you heard of MEF?” I get, “???”

Now I totally understand that not everyone is a news hound like me, enjoys keeping up with the very latest news and developments, but still… I feel that MEF is going to enable foundational changes to how we, the general Line of Business app developers, design, build and maintain our applications. We all like “addin’s/Plug-in’s” right? We all see the power and flexibility they provide? Don’t you want to include that kind of thing in YOUR applications? The stop reading this and go check out MEF… Now…

 

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