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
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
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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
Now I feel sorry for C#, it has no friends......
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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
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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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Seems to me like some people have just gotten used to doing things a certain way. C# is certainly adequate for commercial applications, imo.
bwilhite wrote:
C# is certainly adequate for commercial applications, imo.
Yeah, and that's why the market is flooded with them. The few commercial client applications I have used that are written in .NET run terrible. They remind me of those awful VB apps of old.
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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bwilhite wrote:
C# is certainly adequate for commercial applications, imo.
Yeah, and that's why the market is flooded with them. The few commercial client applications I have used that are written in .NET run terrible. They remind me of those awful VB apps of old.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Well, if hedge funds and banks are looking to employ C# developers (and yes, they are), then that is a pretty good indication to me :) Granted, the demand is still mostly for C++, but still... Not to mention there's also demand in other industries. So going so far as to say it's not fit for commercial development is at the least a bit of an exaggeration. Of course some day maybe I'll be the one complaining about how somebody "screwed up" their technology...
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Well, if hedge funds and banks are looking to employ C# developers (and yes, they are), then that is a pretty good indication to me :) Granted, the demand is still mostly for C++, but still... Not to mention there's also demand in other industries. So going so far as to say it's not fit for commercial development is at the least a bit of an exaggeration. Of course some day maybe I'll be the one complaining about how somebody "screwed up" their technology...
bwilhite wrote:
Well, if hedge funds and banks are looking to employ C# developers (and yes, they are),
Many of these are providing web services and for web services, .NET is fantastic. For basic database front ends, .NET is fantastic. For complex client applications, it's not so great.
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 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.
Well, that would apply if you develop directly to your production server. I develop everything usually locally and the pump it to the production server. This also keeps most of your source off the production server where it might get exposed if the server gets hacked and in shared hosting, it means your actual code is not available to admins.
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!
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bwilhite wrote:
Well, if hedge funds and banks are looking to employ C# developers (and yes, they are),
Many of these are providing web services and for web services, .NET is fantastic. For basic database front ends, .NET is fantastic. For complex client applications, it's not so great.
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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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
Yeah, screwy new dll naming has been a pain. I think they figured most people would just post the entire code to the server and be done with it. There was a HUGE outcry to give us the old style back. I know it took me quite some time to get used to the new style, but now that the old style is a first class citizen once again, I will be making more use of it along with ASP.NET MVC (in the near future when they get it a bit more settled). For those interested in the conversion to web apps (2005) http://webproject.scottgu.com/CSharp/Migration2/Migration2.aspx[^]
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!
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Yeah, screwy new dll naming has been a pain. I think they figured most people would just post the entire code to the server and be done with it. There was a HUGE outcry to give us the old style back. I know it took me quite some time to get used to the new style, but now that the old style is a first class citizen once again, I will be making more use of it along with ASP.NET MVC (in the near future when they get it a bit more settled). For those interested in the conversion to web apps (2005) http://webproject.scottgu.com/CSharp/Migration2/Migration2.aspx[^]
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!
I gotta say, this is one of the most poorly thought out development platforms I've ever seen. Well, besides using a word processor (aka web browser) as an application environment, of course.
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
Actually I was eagerly waiting to see "friend" keyword being introduced once they introduced Generics... But they didn't :((
Syed Muhammad Fahad Application Development Tyler Technologies -- TEMS Division mfahad@mazikusa.com
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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!
Not me. Multiple inheritance was just a painful way of doing things, actually inheritance in general is a painful way of locking in things. Thats why I've read a number of recommendations to program with interfaces instead of inheritance and I agree. Its just easier to modify when you need to change it
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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
Joe Woodbury wrote:
not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++
Even better would have been Eiffel-style "selective export" - more fine-grained than C++ friend. I've not seen this copied in any of the mainstream languages, e.g., see An Improvement on the Access Control Features of C#[^]
Kevin
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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
And what about not supporting abstract base classes for forms or controls? Just try to bring up your form in the designer and see it puke all over the screen. Way to encourage good OO design there fellas.
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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
Just out of interest, how does this compare to the VB.NET 'Friend' scope? (apart from being a different language). Surely it can be done in C# then if it all compiles down to the same?:confused:
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Joe Woodbury wrote:
not implementing the "friend" keyword in C# as it is in C++
Even better would have been Eiffel-style "selective export" - more fine-grained than C++ friend. I've not seen this copied in any of the mainstream languages, e.g., see An Improvement on the Access Control Features of C#[^]
Kevin
I like the solution the authors came up with.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke