Regions: Love or Hate
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I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
Region is the opiate of the people! Ooops. I read that wrong. Never mind
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Like anything in code their use needs to be part of your coding standards. What I'd like to see is a way to colour the entire background of a region (specifically, green or yellow). I use them like
#region Public Methods ----------------------------------------------
and having the entire line highlighted would make them so increidbly valuable as markers. And I know: If your files are short enough you never need something like this... cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Devexpress has something similar to that. Regions can be colored in a differant colour but not the entire region background unfortunately. There is a line indicating the start and end of the region and the option to have the name of the region both at the start and end. I find that it helps but could still be improved on. By the way something seems to be wrong with your sig. Don't see the line seperating your message and sig and there is html in it. This is what I get:
And I know: If your files are short enough you never need something like this...
cheers,
Chris MaunderThe Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP -
I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
I like them as long as used sensibly. They're also great when working with a section of controls events, I put all the events of a group of controls together and stick them in a region, makes it much easier to read.
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I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
If regions are being used to hide code then they are being used incorrectly. When someone "hides" something that means they don't want you to see it. Sweeping a mess under the carpet does not eliminate it, now you have a lumpy rug that someone will trip on. I absolutely agree with using them to group related items, I especially likes Griff’s list above. The ability to change the background to have them stand out would be nice.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
I use an editor[^] that supports real code folding. [^]. Why would I need "regions"? :-\
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I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
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V. wrote:
good use is a bliss, bad use; hell
Very appropriate description of how to write code in any language old, outdated or new. +5 :thumbsup:
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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Slacker007 wrote:
your team needs to ALL be on the same sheet of music
Oh yes! Nothing worse than one idiot individual who insists on K&R bracket format when everyone else has got an IQ bigger than their shoe size moved on to a more readable style.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
I did not know what K&R was so I looked it up - euugh! X| That is a seriously bad way to screw with people's minds!
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.(Winston Churchill)
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Region is the opiate of the people! Ooops. I read that wrong. Never mind
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Like anything in code their use needs to be part of your coding standards. What I'd like to see is a way to colour the entire background of a region (specifically, green or yellow). I use them like
#region Public Methods ----------------------------------------------
and having the entire line highlighted would make them so increidbly valuable as markers. And I know: If your files are short enough you never need something like this... cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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You should not be surprised to learn that you've just made my day.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Used to like, now dislike: Used to like and used them to tidy up "sections" of classes (e.g. fields, properties, methods) now I've come round to the opinion that is just hides code. Too often they hide incorrect class structure and poor general design. The worst offenders in this case are inside methods where a region is used to hide what should be refactored into private methods in some poorly written god-method. I've seeen them used to hide Data Access stuff in an object model which should have been a whole different architectural layer and entire "classes" within a god-class.
Sort of a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Dilbert.[^]
-Or-
A Dead ringer for Kate Winslett[^]Keith Barrow wrote:
I've seeen them used to hide Data Access stuff in an object model which should have been a whole different architectural layer and entire "classes" within a god-class.
Guilty.
Martin Fowler wrote:
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
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Slacker007 wrote:
your team needs to ALL be on the same sheet of music
Oh yes! Nothing worse than one idiot individual who insists on K&R bracket format when everyone else has got an IQ bigger than their shoe size moved on to a more readable style.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
OriginalGriff wrote:
Oh yes! Nothing worse than one idiot individual who insists on K&R bracket format when everyone else has got an IQ bigger than their shoe size moved on to a more readable style.
Hey now, a lot of us started C programming with K&R sitting next to our keyboards. Sure, maybe they did it to save on the number of published pages, but it was as natural as breathing. After many years I finally realized it looked like crap though, and forced myself to change ;)
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I like regions to a point. I think they would be more useful if we could set their background color to something other than the white space color.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I think they would be more useful if we could set their background color to something other than the white space color.
That is an outstanding idea. I never, ever use them right now. But color coded regions would make me feel not as bad about those 500 line functions. (They're not my fault! Entirely...)
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Oh yes! Nothing worse than one idiot individual who insists on K&R bracket format when everyone else has got an IQ bigger than their shoe size moved on to a more readable style.
Hey now, a lot of us started C programming with K&R sitting next to our keyboards. Sure, maybe they did it to save on the number of published pages, but it was as natural as breathing. After many years I finally realized it looked like crap though, and forced myself to change ;)
I did too - after a Instruction Set one week course - but I hated it then, and it caused so many problems because the indentation looked right but didn't match the brackets that I went over to "indented bracket" and have never look back. You still get some people who will change all code they find back to it though... X|
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
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I wasn't sure until I started using them to group related items in the same file: Fields Properties Constructors Event handlers Public properties Private properties Now I find it reduces the clutter, and lets you see what you are interested in, without being distracted by irrelevancies. So much so that I modified the VS default class (and so forth) files to include them as standard. There is a Tip/Trick about it here: Adding your items to Visual Studio default files[^]
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
+5 That's similar to how I generally organize my regions.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
Regions is one of those things that sounds like a great idea but sucks in actual use. Why not just set your editor to always expand all regions? No squinting necessary. :) Marc
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I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
Meh, they only work in an IDE, so I don't generally use them. However, I do use them for some code with a bunch of overloads that I intend to share with others -- here are the Foo methods, here are the Bar methods, etc; or to collapse error-handling so the reader can more easily see the logic of the method. However, I'm of the opinion that very large classes should be broken into separate files (using a partial class) rather than regions -- for instance a Data Access Layer may have separate files for the various methods that act on the various files of the database.
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I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
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I used to love regions, stuck them everywhere in my code. Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently. What's the public opinion - are regions good or bad? Would they be better if they were REALLY big in Visual Studio? I find that I'm squinting to find the little buggers, if they were much more obvious I might get lost less...
With the outlining working so well I find regions rather distracting than useful. Also I think it’s a personal thing; the people who are pedantic how their code looks, those type of people who would use lambdas and wright a huge comment blocks for every method probably loves the regions. Developers who are more concern about readability and usability of their code probably use the regions very rarely if at all.
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