Naming Conventions for C#

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Paulo Morgado — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:45:23 GMT

Hi David,

I like the case sensitiveness of C#.

And after a few stack overflow exceptions, you start wondering what's going on and look for a property reading or writing itself instead of its camel cased backing field. :)

I’ve grown accustomed to recognize what’s camel cased and what’s pascal cased (and mi sight is not that good). Meaningless prefixes (like _, m_, c_, s_, ?_) are noise to me. And noise bothers me.

re: Naming Conventions for C#

David In So. FL — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:57:10 GMT

One of the things I like about VB is the fact its case insensitive. Nothng like spending a couple hours to realize its a single case letter typo.

I am a "looker" not a character by character "reader" so I miss caps all the time. Lots of people miss seeing individual caps. Its the way the mind works. If you looked into it you would see that the brain is kind enough to change what we see so it looks the way we expect it to. There are a lot of examples of this. This is the reason caps are problematic. Has nothing to do with a person's skill at debugging.

The rest will date me. I started with vb 1.0, well actually I started with Basic from the DOS days.

I like using prefix to denote scope. m or c for class scope (depending on your upbring or shop standards if coming from vb6). They are easier to touch type then the underscore as well. g for global variables.

In all your examples you can't tell at a glance what the scope is.

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Paulo Morgado — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:11:00 GMT

I had never thought of that, Dale.

But my view is: why prefix it at all?

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Dale — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:38:47 GMT

I think the use of the underscore should be avoided in naming for all languages, including SQL. In VB, rather than prefixing _ or m_, why not just prefix m or if you like to prefix the type, then do that.

The underscore is a little finger character on a standard keyboard. That finger does not have the strength of any of the other fingers. Over use of the underscore and other special characters typed by the little fingers of either hand lead to repetitive motion disorders. There just no reason to have to type an underscore over and over and over again.

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re: Naming Conventions for C#

Paulo Morgado — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:53:31 GMT

Wich is as good a convention as:

private int var;

public int Var { ... }

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Craig — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:47:27 GMT

I use the underscore as well, to me it means private withing the scope of the class, so:

private int _Var;

public int Var
{
get { return _Var;}
set { _Var = value;}
}

and

private void _PrivateMethod()
{
}

and

public void PublicMethod()
{
}

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Paulo Morgado — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:50:52 GMT

I like when things mean something to me. And, since the underscore means nothing to me, it kind of gets in my nerves.

It's just the way I am.

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Betty — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:41:58 GMT

does it need to mean something? I would have thought the whole stopping name clashes was enough to warrant the use of another naming convention in that case. The underscore just happens to be what I use.

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Paulo Morgado — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:38:04 GMT

And what does the underscore prefix mean?

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Betty — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 06:29:39 GMT

So the following parameter for the function FindPerson hides the class member variable? that just seems silly. I like underscore prefixes.

public class Person {

private int personId;

public int PersonId {
get { return personId; }
set { personId = value; }
}

public void FindPerson(int personId) {
}

}

Naming Conventions for C#

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re: Naming Conventions for C#

Paulo Morgado — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 20:47:29 GMT

It's not without problems and It has happened to me a few times. Fortunately, this has been the only situation where I've got a StackOveflowException and I always know what and where to look.

But, on the other hand, that revels that that developer was unable to debug and he can do a lot worse and not so obvious mistakes. And no amount of prefixes can help you there.

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Fluxtah — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:55:12 GMT

private int foo;
public int Foo
{
get { return foo; }
set { Foo = value; }
}

Check the code carefully, I've seen this happen and a dev take half a day for me to come over and say 'I see your problem, thats where your stack overflow problem is'

And he was astonished at my good eyes.

Granted, this is a head slapping mistake, maybe not enough coffee, but from my point of view having a more user friendly convention can avoid this issue, thats why I like using underscores.

private int _Foo; is much less prone to this;

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Kenneth Siewers — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:14:42 GMT

Well, I actually prefer using the underscore for prefixing my private fields. This is simply because they group together in Intellisense. Whenever I am looking for a private field, I just type in the underscore, and all my private fields show up (including the nasty "_AppDomain" interface Microsoft left behind).

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Paulo Morgado — Wed, 30 May 2007 00:52:56 GMT

Miguel:

I can differentiate them by the casing.

These are "my" naming conventions for C#.

I do have a proposal for case insensitive languages: suffix fields with Field.

Since this convention is for private members only, there's no problem with consuming this classes using case insensitive languages.

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Miguel — Tue, 29 May 2007 23:57:47 GMT

Paulo:

Without the prefix how can you make a difference between a property and private member:

public class TestMeClass
{
private int test;
public int Test
{
get { return test; }
set { test = value; }
}
}

The main issue is not for C# but for case insensitive languages such as VB.NET or Delphi.NET ( In this case these languages can interpret the variable either way; also if you are making a class library that library can be used by any .NET client).

I agree with you idea of prefix, it does make the code stands out.

My C# Naming Conventions For Partial Class Files

Paulo Morgado — Wed, 23 May 2007 23:29:34 GMT

Following up on a previous post , this time I'll give you my naming conventions for partial class

re: Naming Conventions for C#

Paulo Morgado — Tue, 22 May 2007 22:53:53 GMT

Well, I don't.

But I can see you do.

Just looking at the way we write our names everyone can see the importance each one of us gives to casing.

From Jeff's referenced article (www.somethinkodd.com/.../the-case-for-case-preserving-case-insensitivity) I only have to say that my name is Paulo Morgado and, unless it's a misstype, I wouldn't like to see it written as pAuLo MoRgAdO or some other variation.

Casing is important and you agree it is. That's why you use pascal and camel casing in your code instead of underscores separating words, right?

And why does the Visual Basic IDE keep correcting the casing if it's case insensitive? Why not uper case or lower case everything?

re: Naming Conventions for C#

luisabreu — Tue, 22 May 2007 21:44:16 GMT

Well, i'm not sure if case sensitivity is a good thing. Jeff "horror" Atwood doesn't really like it and i think i agree with what he says here: