What Does This Code Do?

re: What Does This Code Do?

Henk de Koning — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:40:54 GMT

I guess this is a case of conflicting defaults:

VB defaults to overflow checking, but the compiler allows you to turn it off (project props/compile/advanced compile options).

C# allows you to explicitly specify the behavior you want (see checked/unchecked keywords), but if you don't it will listen to the /checked compiler option (which is off by default).

-- Henkk

re: What Does This Code Do?

Thomas Scheidegger — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:42:51 GMT

Good/bad is NOT the point.

But _expected_ behavior.

And that's different from language to language.

You have to learn the characteristics of each language, NEVER guess from what you know from others.

re: What Does This Code Do?

odahan — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:41:50 GMT

It's a very difficult question cause no one has the same answer.. it's the proof :-)

Thomas is saying "just learn correctly the language and you'll never have problem". I fully disagree this point of view. Of course in-depth knowledge of the language is a starting point for every serious developer, but this "falsy logical" point of view will lead to avoid strongly typed languages for example. After all, if you exactly know what you do you don't need a strongly typed language ... So I understand Thomas point of view but it is not a good reason to explain why C# is allowing overflow without any exception by default.

So my opinion is, on this point, C# is on the wrong way. We want and we need not ony strongly typed languages but also strongly "controled" languages.

I dislike VB, every version since the first till the most recent one, but I must admit that on this point VB behaves better because it does what a moder language is supposed to do : strong controls and throwing exception when needed.

When Anders created C# from Delphi he took the best ideas of the later (properties for example) but the C temptation was certainly too strong and he added some C/C++ features to C# not in Delphi, and most often it has been a mistake.

Apart from this, I was a Delphi fan, and I'm a C# fan, and I'll will not switch to VB :-)