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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Automatic Properties in C# - A Critique

improve my => 'code' Add to Google

In the latest release of Orcas, one of the new features provided is "Automatic Properties" which allows developers to use a shorthand like the following:

    public class Person {
    
        public string FirstName {
            get; set;
        }

        public string LastName {
            get; set;
        }        
        
        public int Age {
            get; set;
        }
    }

and the compiler knows to interpret this as

    public class Person {

        private string _firstName;
        private string _lastName;
        private int _age;
        
        public string FirstName {

            get {
                return _firstName;
            }
            set {
                _firstName = value;
            }
        }

        public string LastName {

            get {
                return _lastName;
            }
            set {
                _lastName = value;
            }
        }        
        
        public int Age {

            get {
                return _age;
            }
            set {
                _age = value;
            }
        }
    }


Prima facie, this looks like a good thing.  The developer is typing less code, and still has hooks in property accessors to perform validation, or needed side effects from value changes.

But I have a few problems with this shorthand.

Criticism 1

Why is this shorthand needed when there is a snippet (prop) that provides full property accessors, with better hooks for inserting custom actions like validation?

Criticism 2

I think that the shorthand looks too much like the signature of a method normally found in an interface, not a class.  The only difference appears to be an access modifier. So I find the shorthand syntax is confusing...


What do you think?

Jonathan Starr
posted @ Tuesday, January 15, 2008 8:00 PM | Feedback (3)
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Jonathan Starr is a developer in Saint Louis, MO. He holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School and earned his MCSD from Microsoft.


All statements in this blog are personal opinions and do not reflect the opinions of his employer.





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