Curse the .NET designers
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I need to take a moment to publicly curse the .NET designers for not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++. For the third time in a week, the lack of this has prevented me from making what would be an elegant implementation of some classes.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Dude, you don't even want to get me started on the designers. Who's idea was it that you could only inherit from a class if the code lived in this magic little App_Code directory? Probably the same moron who decided that you couldn't put user controls with the UI separated from the code (i.e. ascx and ascx.cs) files in the App_Code directory. So, if you want to use a common base class for your pages (which must by definition live in the App_Code directory), and it wants to load user controls e.g. ControlOne c = (ControlOne)LoadControl("~/ControlOne.ascx"); then you won't successfully compile. Why? Because the code in the magic directory doesn't recognize ControlOne since it doesn't live in the magic directory, which, by definition, it can't. More Flying Dutchman logic. Lovely. Yeah. I want to meet the .NET designers. Really.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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I need to take a moment to publicly curse the .NET designers for not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++. For the third time in a week, the lack of this has prevented me from making what would be an elegant implementation of some classes.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
But all .net code is friends with all other .net code. :confused: (It's that Java stuff it doesn't like.)
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Did you discover the InternalsVisibleTo attribute? It's not as fine grained (works on assembly level), but it does the job for me mostly.
Wout
I know all about that and it's completely inadequate. Who wants to create an assembly just for the classes that need it?
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Dude, you don't even want to get me started on the designers. Who's idea was it that you could only inherit from a class if the code lived in this magic little App_Code directory? Probably the same moron who decided that you couldn't put user controls with the UI separated from the code (i.e. ascx and ascx.cs) files in the App_Code directory. So, if you want to use a common base class for your pages (which must by definition live in the App_Code directory), and it wants to load user controls e.g. ControlOne c = (ControlOne)LoadControl("~/ControlOne.ascx"); then you won't successfully compile. Why? Because the code in the magic directory doesn't recognize ControlOne since it doesn't live in the magic directory, which, by definition, it can't. More Flying Dutchman logic. Lovely. Yeah. I want to meet the .NET designers. Really.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
Actually, you could use the "web application projects" to structure the site in the older method. Now with VS2008, you have a Web Application (old method with Codebehind files) or "Website"s which offer the new method. I prefer the older method as the site is precompiled and source is not required at the site.
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!
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I need to take a moment to publicly curse the .NET designers for not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++. For the third time in a week, the lack of this has prevented me from making what would be an elegant implementation of some classes.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
About the only thing I miss from c/c++ was the mutliple base classes. That was handy at times.
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!
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About the only thing I miss from c/c++ was the mutliple base classes. That was handy at times.
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!
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Multiple inheritance (in C++) sure was handy but equally evil. Interfaces/abstracts would be the way to go.
Bow down to my Awesome power! Ha Ha Ha puny .Net programmers! The most funny thing is that in every c++ forum you'll read people ranting about how friendships are the worst thing that was introduced to Object Oriented... But once they leave old c they start missing it... "Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you got till it's gone They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"
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I need to take a moment to publicly curse the .NET designers for not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++. For the third time in a week, the lack of this has prevented me from making what would be an elegant implementation of some classes.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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I need to take a moment to publicly curse the .NET designers for not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++. For the third time in a week, the lack of this has prevented me from making what would be an elegant implementation of some classes.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
The c# equivalent of friend is internal. Even VB uses the Friend keyword!
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I know all about that and it's completely inadequate. Who wants to create an assembly just for the classes that need it?
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
That's not what the attribute encourages, it just allows assembly B to access assembly A's internal types/members, but the internal keyword works just as fine within the assembly itself. The internal keyword is a bit coarse, but at least it gives you the option of sharing your internals with others.
Wout
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I need to take a moment to publicly curse the .NET designers for not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++. For the third time in a week, the lack of this has prevented me from making what would be an elegant implementation of some classes.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Actually, you could use the "web application projects" to structure the site in the older method. Now with VS2008, you have a Web Application (old method with Codebehind files) or "Website"s which offer the new method. I prefer the older method as the site is precompiled and source is not required at the site.
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!
> I prefer the older method as the site is precompiled and source is not required at the site. I prefer the latter. It's a lot faster in updating a website. Nobody want to change the code, recompile the website and wait for the web browser to appear then login to get to the webpage you're trying to work on. Most of the time, I can update the code on the fly and just refresh the web browser instead of going through the whole process. Beside the IIS web server won't make this App_Code visible to the web browser. This come in handy when the website get bigger and bigger.
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I need to take a moment to publicly curse the .NET designers for not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++. For the third time in a week, the lack of this has prevented me from making what would be an elegant implementation of some classes.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
As you seem to have discovered, C# is NOT C++. C# uses different paradigms to achieve the same goals. Trying to apply C++ concepts to C# is like trying to mix French words and sentence structure into a Spanish conversation. Even those who know both languages will be confused and frustrated. If you really feel the need to program with C++ put it in a library and call if from C#, that is the beauty of our multiple languages. If done appropriately, we all really can get along.
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The internal keyword is lame. It hides things from external non-friend assemblies. It does absolutely no good for classes within an assembly. The result is to force code to be ugly and to not use data and method hiding.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Multiple inheritance (in C++) sure was handy but equally evil. Interfaces/abstracts would be the way to go.
smindlos wrote:
Interfaces/abstracts would be the way to go.
Interfaces are okay, but ultimately way too underpowered to be fully effective. Even worse, a class using an interface MUST implement all the items in the interface. This either means lots of pain with a large interface or intentionally writing the interface to be small and marginally useful. It's a hack.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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As you seem to have discovered, C# is NOT C++. C# uses different paradigms to achieve the same goals. Trying to apply C++ concepts to C# is like trying to mix French words and sentence structure into a Spanish conversation. Even those who know both languages will be confused and frustrated. If you really feel the need to program with C++ put it in a library and call if from C#, that is the beauty of our multiple languages. If done appropriately, we all really can get along.
Dave Buhl wrote:
As you seem to have discovered, C# is NOT C++.
I discovered that five years ago. I also discovered that the .NET designers were lazy asses who eliminated valid OO concepts in C# for no good reason. (They also forgot to implement many useful things in Win32. .NET 2.0 went a long way to fixing this, but I'm still astonished how how much interop I have to do. The problem is that too many of the .NET designers never did application development--seriously, one key designer was hired straight out of college and had never designed classes let alone an application of any significance. This lack of real-world experience really shows.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Actually, you could use the "web application projects" to structure the site in the older method. Now with VS2008, you have a Web Application (old method with Codebehind files) or "Website"s which offer the new method. I prefer the older method as the site is precompiled and source is not required at the site.
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!
Do you have a notion as to how much hassle it is to move an existing project to the older method? I, too, prefer the precompiled approach. I know you can still precompile with 2.0, but it changes the assembly name each time, and if you want to use fixed names it spits out a different dll for each page. Yuck.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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I need to take a moment to publicly curse the .NET designers for not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++. For the third time in a week, the lack of this has prevented me from making what would be an elegant implementation of some classes.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
I too missed this keyword alot
Syed Muhammad Fahad Application Development Tyler Technologies -- TEMS Division mfahad@mazikusa.com
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Dave Buhl wrote:
As you seem to have discovered, C# is NOT C++.
I discovered that five years ago. I also discovered that the .NET designers were lazy asses who eliminated valid OO concepts in C# for no good reason. (They also forgot to implement many useful things in Win32. .NET 2.0 went a long way to fixing this, but I'm still astonished how how much interop I have to do. The problem is that too many of the .NET designers never did application development--seriously, one key designer was hired straight out of college and had never designed classes let alone an application of any significance. This lack of real-world experience really shows.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
I don't totally disagree. But, how long has C# been around as compared to C or C++? How many C or C++ programmers consider VB a serious programming environment? How long did it take for C++ to become a widely accepted language compared to C#? Friend is a technique used by a language to help implement the OO concepts of encapsulation, abstraction, and information hiding. There was a link, I think in yesterdays code project news letter, to an interview with Mr Stroustrup discussing upcoming changes to the C++ Standard that will be implementing techniques common in C# today and a lot of things he wanted to include but couldn't that are part of C#. Because of the enormity of what was made available in the .NET framework, it would be very difficult to implement functionallity for every concievable operation. At some point, you have to identify what fits with your design and if something can be done in a different way that actually fits better with your design, what the majority of users will take advantage of and draw a line. Much of the .NET framework is simply wrappers around the win32 API, so if something is not available you can always roll your own. Point is, every language has its followers, every language has good/bad/ugly points, every language has its evangelists, but calling engineers lazy asses because a feature from another language was not implemented in the same way in this one is way out of bounds. Not trying to start a flame war but there is my two cents.
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I don't totally disagree. But, how long has C# been around as compared to C or C++? How many C or C++ programmers consider VB a serious programming environment? How long did it take for C++ to become a widely accepted language compared to C#? Friend is a technique used by a language to help implement the OO concepts of encapsulation, abstraction, and information hiding. There was a link, I think in yesterdays code project news letter, to an interview with Mr Stroustrup discussing upcoming changes to the C++ Standard that will be implementing techniques common in C# today and a lot of things he wanted to include but couldn't that are part of C#. Because of the enormity of what was made available in the .NET framework, it would be very difficult to implement functionallity for every concievable operation. At some point, you have to identify what fits with your design and if something can be done in a different way that actually fits better with your design, what the majority of users will take advantage of and draw a line. Much of the .NET framework is simply wrappers around the win32 API, so if something is not available you can always roll your own. Point is, every language has its followers, every language has good/bad/ugly points, every language has its evangelists, but calling engineers lazy asses because a feature from another language was not implemented in the same way in this one is way out of bounds. Not trying to start a flame war but there is my two cents.
Dave Buhl wrote:
but calling engineers lazy asses because a feature from another language was not implemented in the same way in this one is way out of bounds.
I'm not calling them lazy asses simply because they didn't implement something in C# the same way as C++, I'm calling them lazy because they knew about C++, Java, Object Pascal and so forth and yet still made a language and framework that more resembled a toy than something useful for writing commercial applications. (Do understand that I remember quite clearly the official Microsoft evangelizing of .NET 1.0 and how all applications should now be written in .NET. When I dealt with Microsoft at the time concerning .NET, it was a nearly endless stream of whining about how what we wanted was too hard and that it would break the purity of the CLI and all sorts of other nonsense. I was told straight out that C# templates would "never happen." This was true of many of the coolest features of .NET 2.0, which leads me to believe there was some change in management between .NET 1.0 and .NET 2.0. Add to that the almost complete contempt the Visual Studio team had toward C++/MFC/ATL/WTL and I've gotten pretty jaded about the Microsoft development tools division.) PS. While I'm glad Stroustrup invented C++, I'm equally glad he didn't do many of the things he now claims he should have done. I think he's forgetting many of his design constraints and doing some historical revisionism along the way, since some of these concepts NEVER showed up in any of the contemporary writing he did. I'm opposed to some of the proposed changes for C++; I find them to be breaking changes and better implemented as part of a new language that is to C++ as C++ is to C. (Yeah, some people claim D is it.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke