February, 2010

Courtesy of a tweet from Scott Hanselman, here's a nifty ToString() extension method that allows you to name properties and fields directly.

It works like this:

var p
    = new Person
    {
        Name = "William Williams",
        BirthDate = new DateTime(1936, 1, 1)
    };
 
Console.WriteLine(p.ToString("{Name}, born {BirthDate:d}, Age {Age}"));

See the original on pastie.org.

This has to qualify as an obscure FxCop feature:

DoNotDeclareReadOnlyMutableReferenceTypes is a rule that checks for visible read-only fields that are mutable reference types (classes). A mutable type is a type whose instance data can be changed once it has been constructed.

It's helpful when applications let me know that new versions have been released, especially when it's a browser letting me know about a security update.

In most cases, though, the timing sucks - just as I open the application with a specific goal in mind, I'm given a choice to make. Either I allow myself to be hijacked down a upgrading detour, taking me away from my immediate goal, or I dismiss the upgrade dialog and have to remember to do it myself later on. Neither option is particularly helpful.

One area where improving on POCO has potential to impact greatly is that of database persistence - the domain of the object relation mapper, or ORM.