Chemical structure drawing with C#/VB.NET and TDD

So a little fact about me: I picked up chemistry back in 2007 and I really enjoy the subject*. Naturally I like to apply software development to chemistry-related problems (see my chemical database for an example).

I figured "hey Chris, you haven't made your own structure drawing tool yet," and it would be a good fun learning experience. Right now I'm using a C# back-end for all of the logic and plan on using a VB .NET UI front-end just to pick up the language. Also, I've really been trying to get more out of TDD and practice it more. I've tried to stick to it and so far it's going pretty well, although there is room for improvement.

I also finally decided to pick up AnkhSVN, which provides integration of Subversion into Visual Studio. So far it's working pretty well.

Anyway, here's some of the things I hope to implement:

• Basic editing: adding/deleting of atoms and bonds
• Support for adding fragments at once instead of having to create them each time
• Saving/loading of structures in some common formats
• (possible) integration into my chemical database program since it currently relies on an external editor

We'll see how far that goes, hopefully I'll have some screenshots too. Unfortunately it will probably be slow progress since I'm being bombarded with assignments this week (chemistry professors here seem to like homework as opposed to projects, which CS professors and I prefer...)


*My favorite experiment was distilling liquid bromine from KBr/H2SO4/H2O2 solution ... good times. One of  my general chemistry professors even helped me improve the process