C# biggest awesome

22 hours ago, elmer wrote

For me, although it's more a .net thing... the garbage collector... and the fact that I can get away with being so damned lazy about cleaning up after myself... LOL.

Don't be lazy with cleaning up after yourself! Even in C#. Just because it has a garbage collector, doesn't mean you can be that lazy. Always call Dispose() on IDisposables (including MemoryStreams, and ESPECIALLY Bitmaps), and I'm in the habit of setting everything to null when I'm done using it (not sure if it actually matters though; performance-wise). There are still SOME memory leaks in C# to watch out for. 

26 minutes ago, IDWMaster wrote

*snip*

Don't be lazy with cleaning up after yourself! Even in C#. Just because it has a garbage collector, doesn't mean you can be that lazy. Always call Dispose() on IDisposables (including MemoryStreams, and ESPECIALLY Bitmaps), and I'm in the habit of setting everything to null when I'm done using it (not sure if it actually matters though; performance-wise). There are still SOME memory leaks in C# to watch out for. 

<sarcasm>I set everything to null 5x just to be sure, and terminate all lines with 5 ;'s just in case.</sarcasm>

Disposing is important, yes, but setting stuff to null?  Pointless noise.  Stop it!   

25 minutes ago, IDWMaster wrote

and I'm in the habit of setting everything to null when I'm done using it (not sure if it actually matters though; performance-wise).

apparently this is a good habit if you are targeting CF or the phone.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/abhinaba/archive/2011/01/04/wp7-when-does-gc-consider-a-local-variable-as-garbage.aspx

It is the dot.  Overlooked today. But the dot in dot.net changed everything from prior vb6 days.  It made the clean namespace and fx possible and the intellisense and tied everything in together.  Which also led to organized and contexful documentation.  The dot rules. 

3 hours ago, IDWMaster wrote

*snip*

Don't be lazy with cleaning up after yourself! Even in C#. Just because it has a garbage collector, doesn't mean you can be that lazy.

How about... don't be so quick to assume and lecture.

I was talking about working in a managed environment, vs. unmanaged - hence the reference to it being more of a .net thing.

6 hours ago, felix9 wrote

*snip*

 

apparently this is a good habit if you are targeting CF or the phone.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/abhinaba/archive/2011/01/04/wp7-when-does-gc-consider-a-local-variable-as-garbage.aspx

Thanks for the information, it is good to know.  It does say, however that it's only important when: "... you have locals that hold onto very large data structures and that function will remain executing for a long time then set those variables to null when you are done using them (e.g. in between the last usage of a variable in a large function and calls to a bunch of web-services in the same function which will take a long time to return)."  To clarify things, as mentioned in the link, the full CLR does analysis to figure when a local variable no longer is in use at JIT time.  However CLI implementations are not required to do so, and the CF doesn't, due to resource limitations.  Good info, thanks Felix9.

I am getting a lot of mileage out of extension methods. It was a great day when I found out you could code extension methods for interfaces and enums as well as classes. Simply as a way to organize code, where I place methods that apply to an interface or enum in a static class in the same file as the interface/enum.  Something else useful about extension methods is  the this object can be null and the extension method will still be called. Which is not the case with a method of a class.