Thursday, August 28, 2008 6:14 PM
Here is a great tool that changed the way I thought about .NET development... wait for it... Lutz Roeder's Reflector (link).
Which uh apparently is now owned by redgate software, makers of SQL Refactor (very nice tool). All right how many people 'know' their language well enough to debate the merits whether it is VB.NET or C#? Are you thinking the differences between the 2 are too great to start a gentlemens discussion? Or simply feel your blood boil? Either way, I am not concerned about pluses and minuses for either side.
I am more interested in what happens to 'my' pretty, flowing artsy code (no emotion involved at all) when the compiler gets ahold of it.
<some time later> I had thought I was going to have a good example showing how the VB compiler creates different code than the C# compiler when comparing String to String.Empty, but I think that particular item does not work the same since VS2003 or at least I cannot reproduce it.
No matter, I have had quite a few discussions concerning standardization as it applies to optimized code. Many times when we looked at reflector, we noted our 'discussion' was moot because the compiler changed what we thought we were doing anyway. So 80% of us need to relax and let the compiler help us out by interning strings, getting rid of temp variables, inlining, etc.
rusty