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C# / .NET / dotnet / Programming

Thread vs BackgroundWorker

Background There are two classes available in the .NET framework that sometimes have some confusion around them: The Thread and the BackgroundWorker. They're both used to do some heavy lifting for you on a separate thread of execution (so you can keep on keepin' on), so why do we have two different things to accomplish the same end result   Enter The Thread Class The Thread class is available in the System.Threading namespace. Surprising, right? It's the basic unit for spawning off work to be done. Threads let you provide them with a name, which could be one advantage to using them. A thread can either operate as "background" which means it will be killed when the application exists, or not as background, which will actually keep the application alive until the thread is killed off. An instance of the…

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July 29, 2013
Programming

How and Why to Avoid Excessive Nesting

Background This probably sounds really nit-picky or OCD, but I think it's an issue worth addressing. Excessive nesting of logic within code can make things nightmarish to read. Even a few of years ago I never thought anything of this. I mean, how much could it really affect someone reading it? He/she must be a complete newb to not be able to read my logic. Fast forward to a co-op placement where this was more closely moderated by my managers, and I began to pay more attention to it... Why? Alright, so all that you know so far about my opinion on this is that excessive nesting bothers me. So far, my mission is accomplished. Everything else is just extra. The first issue with excessive nesting is that it actually makes logic hard to follow. If you're doing code reviews…

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July 25, 2013
Programming

Keep Your Fields Private

Background A recent discussion about this spurred a bit of a debate. Ever since I can remember, I've always been told to keep fields private. If you want to expose them any more than private you should use a property. Of course, I was defending my stance on this and figured I should see what other people were saying. I turned to the trusty Stack Overflow (SO) for some answers. Argument For: Control One of the major categories of arguments for keeping fields private has to do with control. Some great points brought up by SO posters included that properties allow you to easily add verification to your data storage. With a field inside of your class, your control is over how this variable is manipulated is constrained to the class. As soon as you expose something outside of the class,…

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July 22, 2013

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