Regions: Love or Hate

[QuiJohn]

John 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...)

[OriginalGriff]

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."

[Dan Neely]

+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

[Marc Clifton]

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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[PIEBALDconsult]

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.

[Vark111]

I only use them in two cases: - private nested classes - to wrap interface implementation *only* if the class in question implements multiple interfaces. I used to use them to wrap properties, fields, methods, etc... but I've moved away from that.

[Single Step Debugger]

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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[Lost User]

Perhaps also a region for destructors/finalizers/dispose where needed?

"Dark the dark side is. Very dark..." - Yoda ---
"Shut up, Yoda, and just make yourself another toast." - Obi Wan Kenobi

[peterchen]

Good when not abused. In a team, agree on / decree a coding standard, and have the balls to enforce it. -------- I wished we finally moved away from this text file thing and moved to a more entity-centric editing, keepign the text thing only for backward compatibility.

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[BobJanova]

I like same-line braces and find it more readable (in that you can see more than 2 lines of actual code at once). You may not like it but calling anyone who does an idiot is rather unfair.

[BobJanova]

I hate them. They are a way of making a file which is too complicated and should be split up appear not to be. If you think you need them, consider whether some of that code is actually necessary at all, or in the right place.

[Dan Neely]

What do you consider the too complicated and need split threshold to be? IMO regions start being useful in keeping stuff organized well before that point.

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

[BobJanova]

As soon as you can't navigate the file (in your mind or using something like the tree view which is in most IDEs showing you the structure) any more. That's obviously very subjective (and depends on the domain) but in general somewhere around 500-1000 lines.

[Dan Neely]

I've never used the IDE treeviews for within classes; showing them and the one for files/projects either hogs too much space or requires swapping between them all the time adding more annoyance than it's worth. Also, even with icons globbing everything into a class into a single flat list has never seemed logical to me. A large part of what I use regions for is clumping similar items together (similar to OriginalGriff's setup[^]). With that in place I find classes generally remain manageable until around 1500 lines. The only time this is often an issue is with complex UI forms; where I've yet to find a good balance between classes getting bloated or where a specific feature is in a pile of custom controls only used on a single dialog.

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

[dazfuller]

I have a love/hate relationship with regions. Personally I use them for breaking a code file into sections, so Fields, Properties, Public Methods etc... Now that I don't mind as I can still find things quite easily, I'm sure others might disagree but it works for me. What I hate is when developers put them around every method! Even worse is when they only use the method name instead of the whole signature, for example

#region MyMethod

public int MyMethod(int a, int b) { ... }

#endregion

#region MyMethod

public int MyMethod(int a, int b, string c) { ... }

#endregion

Which one is it that I need to look at? And what does this add as I can collapse the methods anyway! Seriously, if you do this then you should have your keyboard taken away from you until you know better!

[SimonRigby]

Dave Kerr wrote:

Now I hate them, each member of our team uses them differently.

I think that's the issue right there .. its not regions that's the problem .. its inconsistent use. You could say the same for any tool/practice. I use them to group things away that I don't need to see, like private members etc, and I use them consistently for this reason.

The only thing unpredictable about me is just how predictable I'm going to be.

[Brad Stiles]

Marcus_2 wrote:

Good, if used with some sense.

You mean, like almost everything else ever done in programming? :)

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[Remi BOURGAREL]

I always say : when you use region, just create another class ! It's useful only for generated code (like proxy class for web services)

[BrianPayne]

I LOVE regions, but only on a structured, limited basis. They are helpful to organize the class, but can get unruly if overused. I stick to several standard regions and alphabetize my methods, properties, etc, so that everything is easy to find. - Catalyst

[TNCaver]

It seems to me that you really don't hate regions, you just hate how they've been misused.