Question

Provide at least three (3) best practices when creating methods in C# and explain why they are "best.

Answer 1

1. Use Proper Naming Conventions, Indentations and Comments
   Proper naming conventions and Indentations are prefered for consistency and readability of the code. Putting comments for each block of codes is a good practice, which serves very handy when one reads the code written by another person or written by himself/herself long ago.

2. Always Use Properties instead of Public Variables:
   Reason behind this is, it makes your code properly encapsulated in OOPs environment. By using getters & setters, you can restrict the user directly accessing the member variables. You can restrict setting the values explicitly thus making your data protected from accidental changes.

3. Prefer Run-time Constants over Compile time Constants
   Run-time constants are those which are evaluated at the run-time and declared with the keyword “readonly”. On the other side, compile time constants are static, evaluated at the time of compilation and declared with the keyword “const”. Compile time constants (const) must be initialized at the time of declaration and can’t be changed later. Also, they are limited to only numbers and strings. The IL replaces the const variable with the value of it over the whole code and thus it is a bit faster. Whereas, the Run-time constants (read-only) are initialized in the constructor and can be changed at different initialization time. The IL references the read-only variable and not the original value. So, when you have some critical situation, use const to make the code run faster. When you need a reliable code, always prefer read-only variables.

4. Prefer “is” and “as” Operators While Casting
   Instead of Explicit casting, use the Implicit casting to avoid unnecessary exception handlings.