Comments on: Extension methods illustrated

By: Greg M

Greg M — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:41:47 +0000

Where the hell did that method come from?

How do you usually locate functions that aren’t methods of a class? This is no different.

Of course the only reason for the o.f(x) syntax instead of f(o,x) is that it indicates that o is defined in-place in the definition of o’s type, so once you break that, the need for that sugar becomes questionable. But I’m pretty sure this feature isn’t just sugar – can’t you use it to make old classes implement new interfaces? That fixes a _whole_ bunch of the problems you get when you try to write modular, polymorphic code in an OO language.

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:28:09 +0000

Yeah it’s easy to find out where it came from with “Go To Definition”.

It really is just sugar, the .NET 2.0 runtime is unchanged for .NET 3.5 – it’s just new frameworks and compiler magic.

You can’t use it to make existing classes implement new interfaces, that would require runtime changes I’m sure.

[)amien

By: Kezzer

Kezzer — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 12:50:39 +0000

This is actually something I had a discussion on in a Java group somewhere on the Internet. Java 7 is in development and there’s been some discussions for “features” such as this. I had made a point that it’s good to keep one concept straight and concise. It’s like arbitrarily introducing a new word into the English language. People will say the word, no-one will know what it means, and they’ve never had to know, suddenly they have to learn something new even though the old approach worked just fine.

There’s a lot of short-hand stuff in C#.NET from what I remember though. I do remember partial classes mainly when I was working at Symantec, they caused me some headaches ;)

I say stick to the traditional way, that way no-one will have to get confused :)

By: steve

steve — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:36:36 +0000

I know. But as far as reading the code that’s been written is concerned, it looks like a method of the class, but it isn’t. Personally that would drive me nuts if I was reading someone elses code. Where the hell did that method come from? I can only imagine the crap that people will tack on to the standard String classes, and they’ll all do it differently no doubt.

Personally I think this syntactic sugar stuff can be taken way too far. Sure it’s clever little tricks that a low-level developer will love playing about with, but I seriously question whether it actually adds to the overall quality of the software, and perhaps the reverse. There’s a lot to be said for elegance in simplicity and directness, not layering tricks upon tricks.

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:13:32 +0000

It doesn’t let you tack on extra methods – it’s just syntatic sugar for the compiler that calls the static method for you in a more human-readable way.

[)amien

By: steve

steve — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:36:07 +0000

Ugh, that’s an ugly hack if ever I saw one, akin to how OO used to be emulated with procedural languages.

As they add more and more ‘magic’ features to .Net that bypass core limitations they’ve built in, I wonder how hard it’s going to be to pick apart a full-scale project after a couple of years development? I know it ‘looks nice’ but to be honest being able to tack on extra methods to core classes willy-nilly without easily being able to tell what’s the standard API and what’s not horrifies me.