New in C#4

[Bruno Medeiros]

Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> Bruno Medeiros escribió:
>> Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>>> Robert Fraser escribió:
>>>> Denis Koroskin wrote:
>>>>> I once had the following Color class:
>>>>>
>>>>> class Color
>>>>> {
>>>>>     this (byte alpha, byte red, byte green, byte blue) { ... }
>>>>> }
>>>>>
>>>>> and used it as follows:
>>>>>
>>>>> Color c = new Color(255, 0, 255, 0); // opaque green color
>>>>>
>>>>> After refactoring, alpha became last argument in ctor:
>>>>>
>>>>>     this(byte red, byte green, byte blue, byte alpha) { ... }
>>>>>
>>>>> Note that this change didn't raise any compilation error, nothing 
>>>>> that would notify my of possible error.
>>>>>
>>>>> Needless to say that I didn't enjoy searching all the code that 
>>>>> used Color to reorder parameters (although some artifact were nice :)
>>>>> It would save me quite some time if I initialized all my instances 
>>>>> as follows:
>>>>>
>>>>> Color c = new Color(alpha: 255, red: 0, green: 255, blue: 0);
>>>>>
>>>>> Now compiler could raise an error if parameters order was changed. 
>>>>> Even better - compiler could reorder parameters for me 
>>>>> automatically if given that all of them are specified and no params 
>>>>> ommited (unlike Python). This makes code more robust to refactoring.
>>>>
>>>> The first thing  I thought of when reading this is Eclipse JDT's 
>>>> "Change Method Signature" refactoring that will look up all the 
>>>> calls in your project & automatically reorder the parameters for you.
>>>
>>> Me too. :-)
>>
>> Of course I also ate a piece of that cake. ^^
>>
>> I keep getting the impression that we 3 are the only people in the D 
>> NG that have used JDT extensively.
>> That's unfortunate because I feel most people here don't realize how 
>> much an IDE like JDT (or something comparable, like IntelliJ IDEA, but 
>> not VS) can shape and improve the development workflow (and thus have 
>> potential implications in language design).
>> And it's not something that can be easily understood in foresight - 
>> one really has to try it out (rich IDE functionality) for some time 
>> and even then, you might not notice it until it is *taken* from you. 
>> Fun story, that happened to me:
>>
>> When I started looking for work after graduation, recruiters asked me 
>> if I had preference for working with C# or Java. I had no 
>> anti-Microsoft bias (apparently some people do, even in the 
>> workplace), so I judged both in terms of language only, and I really 
>> didn't have much of a preference then (note, this was considering C# 
>> only up to version 2.0 only). I was slightly inclined to Java, but 
>> only because I had used it more.
>> But months later, when I started working on a project that had a 
>> desktop client, I tried using C# (to take advantage of the WinForms 
>> designer) I was vexed as Visual Studio (C# 2005) seemed primitive in 
>> comparison. Suddenly many of the things I had taken from granted were 
>> gone, and I missed them a lot more than I expected (one example is the 
>> Ctrl-1 "Assign to Local Variable" refactoring which gradually become 
>> one of my most used refactoring, almost as much as Refactor-Rename).
> 
> I recently discovered you can do the same with Ctrl+2, L :-)
> 
> Of course in D that'll be
> 
> auto whatever = <your expression here>;
> 
> Do here's a clear example where a language helps not being repetitive, 
> and that kind of shortcut becomes less useful.
> 
> But refactoring is an essential thing in TDD, and I think that can't be 
> easily supported by any language without using a proper IDE.
> 
> I also have the sensation we are the only guys that used JDT. In my 
> workplace everyone feels very, very comfortable using Java; not because 
> of the language itself, but because of Eclipse. It's amazing the speed 
> boost you get once you get used to it. You don't have to look at 
> external documentation files, you don't have to read someone else's code 
> to understand what's going on. You don't need to remember lots of names, 
> where's everything is located.
> 

"you don't have to read someone else's code to understand what's going 
on." - Hum, I agree with the rest of what you said, but not necessarily 
on this one. In fact I do a lot of "browsing" with Eclipse (Ctrl-click, 
Open Type, etc.), in order to read other's code.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Developer, MSc. in CS/E graduate
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D