Lev Lazinskiy

R1D16 Object Oriented Programming in C#

After wrapping up the Intro to C# course I began the next course in the series which covers Object Oriented Programming in C#. C# is an object oriented language, similar to Java. This means that running all of your code out of a single “main” method is possible (and is exactly what we did in the last course) but goes against the spirit of the language itself.

I also read a very timely blog post today about when to create a new class in C# by K. Scott Allen. This is one of the most well written articles i’ve read regarding this topic and comes with some really great advice and rules of thumb. My biggest takeaway was this:

If you write a sentence saying you can use the class to ___ and ___ in a system, then it might be time to look at making two classes instead of one.

Cool Stuff

• C# support partial classes (as well as partial structs and interfaces). This means that you can define the class accross multiple different source files. I can't think of an immediate time where I wanted this feature in another langauge but its cool to know that it is there.
• For simple class properties, C# comes with auto-implemented getters and setters so if you are not doing any sort of custom validation or logic, then you can simplify the code.

public class Person {
private string name;

// traditional getters and setters 
public string Name
{
    get
    {
        return name;
    }
    set
    {
        name = value;
    }
}

// auto-implemented getters and setters 
public string Name { get; set; }
}

• If you are using Visual Studio it makes it dead simple to create the getters and setters automatically after your field has been defined. Some of the refactoring functionality of Visual Studio is really amazing.