Now where did I put that member?

good blog

Phany — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 05:14:10 GMT

You are the best. Thank you http://www.bignews.com

re: Now where did I put that member?

Matthew W. Jackson — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 00:12:00 GMT

Mark: I can think of at least one case where I'd use EditorBrowsableState.Never.

If I were writing a Complex struct, I might want to provide as many overloaded operators as possible to as many different languages. If you follow CLS specs, it shouldn't be a problem if a language doesn't support all operators. If you write overloaded operators you're supposed to have alternate methods (usually well-named static methods) for non-operator-overloading languages. In the case of the exponent operator, I would most likely have a static Complex.Pow(Complex, Complex) method so that C# users could call operation. However, VB are able to use ^, so in VB I can have a Public Shared Complex Operator ^(Complex, Complex)

However, it appears that under the current implementation, the method for this operator shows up in C# Intellisense, even though I'm providing an alternative. Using the attribute, the method should be able to be hidden from intellisense, although for me it still shows up (I don't know why).

Speaking of which, if I were to be writing the Complex struct in C# (which I most likely would, being a C# programmer), there is currently no way I know of to mark the op_Exponent method as SpecialName so that VB can recognize it as an operator and consume it. I've posted this problem on the MSDN Feedback system, and it seems it has been turned over to the VB team for review (although I'm quite certain that it's a C# problem).

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/viewfeedback.aspx?feedbackid=3d5f27e5-bfcb-45f4-84fd-b56323910906

Maybe now I need to post another feedback report since EditorBrowsableState.Never isn't working in C# (it does work in VB, however).

re: Now where did I put that member?

Mark Levison — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 19:24:00 GMT

Sounds like the attribute EditorBrowsableState.Never needs to be deprecated. If you add another state to Intellisense that will only **rarely** appear then I think as end user I will just be confused. In fact knowing me I will spend hours googling 'intellisense grey'.

Short of deprecating EditorBrowsableState.Never I don't see a clean solution.

re: Now where did I put that member?

Matthew W. Jackson — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 03:32:00 GMT

Now that .NET 2 supports friend-assemblies, Shouldn't all the public-but-not-intended-to-be-used members in the framework now be marked Obsolete and replaced with internal versions?

Either that, or clean up the code, make the members fully public and not hidden, and write some good documentation.

I don't see any in-between visibility. I understand the need for internal across assemblies, and while some argue that internal should never be used, I'm certainly not one of them.

If people are actually using these methods (and I know they are, as I've seen several Internet posts about using certain unsupported public classes), and there are good reasons for them not to use them, then mark them Obsolete and give them a chance to stop using them.

I at least hope that these not-so-public members have been tested for security flaws.

re: Now where did I put that member?

Radu Grigore — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 06:21:00 GMT

Cyrus, I'm not exactly sure why you felt like repeating two times for me what the problem is, but I appreciate your patience :)

re: Now where did I put that member?

Cyrus Najmabadi — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 21:36:00 GMT

Jeff: Thanks!

This is one of the reasons I love working on intellisense (As opposed to just a straight compiler). The enormous amount of fault tolerance that we need to have to support the code you have in it crappy state means that testing and verifying "correctness" is enormously challenging. Even defining what "correct" is is too difficult for me to do. I'd like to blog about this fact alone at some point.

re: Now where did I put that member?

Jeff Parker — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 21:31:00 GMT

Hah, well that's a reason ;-)

We all suck a little, and we all did buggy code at one point and time and maybe in the future. Coders are only human.

I will see if I can find that member but might be a difficult hunt. God only knows how many lines of code I have written in VS2003. From Windows Services to Web Sites. And just as I get really comfortable in thinking I know most of the Framework, you have to go and come out with framework 2.0 ;-) Oh well some of the framework in there is a welcomed addition. Less dll's I have to write.

re: Now where did I put that member?

Cyrus Najmabadi — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:46:00 GMT

Jeff: "Could there be another reason you would get absolutely no intellesense for a member? "

In a word: Yes :-)

The reason being:
a) We suck...
b) Faulty logic in the code

hehehe :-)

Seriously, there are bugs and they do lead to missing members sometimes. We've worked very hard to eliminate them but it does happen. While we're very confident about the VS2k5 codebase we don't have absolute confidence. That's why when Daigo came in saying "intellisense is missing a member" my heart sank because I thought there was something we missed.

If you ever do find out what that member was let me know so I can test to make sure it's not a problem now!

re: Now where did I put that member?

Jeff Parker — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:41:00 GMT

Hmm, not this one. I distinctly remember it not giving me any intellesense what so ever. Like I said I could type it in but got no help with it at all, noargs or anything. I wish I could remember exactly what it was for but I was confounded by it not giving me any intellesense at all. It was also all part of the .net Framework as well. Standard framework not mobile Since I don;t do Mobil code. Also I am pretty sure it was 1.1 of the framework, Cause I tested it both at home and at work just to see if there was something wonkey with my machine at work. And my PC at home never had VS 2002 on it. Could there be another reason you would get absolutely no intellesense for a member? Like I said it didn't show in the list at all, but according to MSDN it existed and I did reflect it out. I do not remember any unusual Args on it but it would just not show up or give me intellesense. But I could type it in end the line with a semicolon and hit compile and it worked. Man I wish I remember what this was. I just assumed from your description in this blog entry this described everything I seen and was sharing my experiences of dealing with this.

re: Now where did I put that member?

Cyrus Najmabadi — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 19:26:00 GMT

Jeff: We will bind to the method just fine and will give you parameter help for it. All we currently do is hide it in the completion list.