Why should I avoid using Properties in C

0 votes

Jeffrey Richter, in his excellent book CLR Via C#, stated that he dislikes properties and advises against using them. He gave a justification, but I'm not sure I get it. Can somebody tell me why I should use properties and why I shouldn't? Does this change in C# 3.0 with automated properties?

I included Jeffrey Richter's thoughts as a reference:

• Field access is always accessible and writable, regardless of whether a property is read-only or write-only. It's recommended to provide both get and set accessor methods when defining a property.

• While a property method may throw an exception, field access does not.

• A field can be supplied as an out or ref parameter to a method, but not a property. The following code, for example, will not compile:

using System;
public sealed class SomeType
{
   private static String Name 
   {
     get { return null; }
     set {}
   }
   static void MethodWithOutParam(out String n) { n = null; }
   public static void Main()
   {
      // For the line of code below, the C# compiler emits the following:
      // error CS0206: A property or indexer may not
      // be passed as an out or ref parameter
      MethodWithOutParam(out Name);
   }
}

• While a property method can take a long time to perform, field access is always instantaneous. A common purpose for using properties is to execute thread synchronisation, which can cause the thread to hang indefinitely; consequently, if thread synchronisation is required, a property should not be used. In this case, a method is preferable. Calling the property method will be very slow if your class can be accessed remotely (for example, if your class is derived from System.MashalByRefObject), hence a method is preferable over a property. Classes derived from MarshalByRefObject, in my opinion, should never use properties.

• If a property method is called numerous times in a row, it may return a different value each time; a field always returns the same value. The System is in place. The readonly Now field of the DateTime class returns the current date and time. This property will return a different value each time you query it. This is an error, and Microsoft thinks they could correct it by making Now a method rather than a property in the class.

• A property method may have visible side effects, whereas field access does not. In other words, a user of a type should be able to change the order in which certain attributes described by the type are changed without causing the type to behave differently.

• A property method may use more memory or return a reference to something that isn't part of the object's state, thus changing the returned object has no effect on the original; querying a field always returns a reference to an object that is guaranteed to be part of the original object's state. Working with a property that returns a copy can be perplexing for developers, and this feature is often overlooked.

Jun 7, 2022 in C# by pranav
• 2,590 points
412 views

1 answer to this question.

0 votes
Jeff dislikes properties because they resemble fields, and developers who don't know the difference will treat them as such, expecting that they'll be inexpensive to execute and so on.

Personally, I disagree with him on this issue; I believe that properties make client code easier to read than similar method calls. I agree that developers should be aware that properties are essentially methods in disguise; nonetheless, I believe that training developers on this is preferable to making code more difficult to read by utilising methods. (I know that the corresponding C# code would be a lot easier to follow after seeing Java code with many getters and setters being called in the same statement.) The Law of Demeter is great in theory, but it doesn't always work out. Name. The word "length" is a good one to utilise.

(And no, automatically implemented properties have no bearing on this.)

This is similar to the arguments against utilising extension techniques - I get the logic, but in my opinion, the practical benefit (when used sparingly) exceeds the disadvantage.
answered Jun 7, 2022 by rajiv
• 1,620 points

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