dpratt71 said:
W3bbo said:
*snip*

I am at least somewhat acquainted with ReadOnlyCollection. In any case, I consider ReadOnlyCollection vs. IEnumerable as mostly apples vs. oranges. Changing nothing else about your example, what would be the drawback to defining TheCollection as type IEnumerable<Object>?

I'm assuming you mean like this: 

class Foo { 
public IEnumerable<Object> TheCollection { get; private set; }
private List<Object> underlyingCollection;

public Foo() {
underlyingCollection = new List<Object>();
TheCollection = (IEnumerable<Object>) underlyingCollection; 
}
}

In this case, your collection isn't actually read-only.  A user of your library can cast TheCollection back to List<Object> and modify the contents of the list, which is bad in most situations (since you're directly accessing a private data member).