VB + C# Adventures (Part 5)

I Miss This

VB definitely makes certain things easier than C#.  This may go back to the whole VB making me lazy thing, but I miss being able to do this and not having to worry about a null reference exception:

...

Dim i As Integer = Len(Trim(SomeString))

...

Note that if the code above were to changed to SomeString.Trim.Length, a null reference exception could occur in either language.

Conversion methods are available in the System.Convert namespace, but in VB you can do the old CBool(SomeObject), CInt(SomeObject), etc.  I’m not saying that using the System.Convert methods are bad or anything, just that I need to get used to certain things. 

 

Style

I’ll be blunt, I hate sloppy code.  I try to be consistent in my style and cleanliness regardless of the language I’m programming in.  I think that C# definitely has more possibilities as far as clean styles go.  For example:

...
if (someCondition)
    DoThis();
...
if (someCondition){
    DoThis();
}
...
if (someCondition)
{
    DoThis();
}
...

I find all three of the above styles readable.  However, given the syntactic flexibility of C#, messiness is just as easy:

...
if (someCondition) DoThis(); if(someOtherCondition) {DoThis();AlsoDoThis();}
int i = 0;

I’ve always hated code that sat on one line, even way back in college when I was learning C/C++.  Sure it can be more succinct, but I find it harder to read.