Some Best Practices for C# Application Development

Few days ago, in one my earlier posts, I discussed about “Some Best Practices for Silverlight Application Development (XAML)” which got a huge hit by my readers. I got a lot of feedback on that too. Someone from the community also suggested that I write some best coding practices on C#. This struck my mind and hence I decided to write some best practices about C# coding here from my past few years of experience.
For the past few years, I learned a lot and tried to share the best of my knowledge to others who are new in the software development field. I contribute this post to those fellow members. Hope, I will get more feedback and/or suggestions here too.
I liked C# programming when I started with .NET technology. I never tried to write code in VB.NET as I decided my career on that. When I was new to this field, I made a lot of mistakes and from those mistakes I learnt more things. There’s a proverb: “Mistakes make you learn more & more…”. My career was one of them. Also there’s a proverb: “There’s no end to learning in life. Each second, a person can learn”. So, if there are any more suggestions, please share those with me. It will help me and others to learn more in a proper way.
One second, there are various posts available on the internet regarding the same topic. If you do a Google, you will get a number of them. But these collections are based on my experiences, those I learnt and thought of sharing.
Let’s stop here and start discussing the Best Coding Practices of C# application development. Here are some of them:

  • Use proper Naming Conventions
    • Always use Camel or Pascal naming format
    • Avoid all uppercase or lowercase names
    • Never use a name which begins with numeric character
    • Always prefer meaningful names for your class, property, method, etc.
    • Never build different names varied by capitalization
    • Don’t use the same name used in .NET Framework
    • Avoid adding prefixes or suffixes for your identifiers
    • Always use “I” as prefix for Interfaces
    • Always add “Exception” as suffix for your custom exception class
    • Never prefix or suffix the class name to its property name
    • Prefix “Is”, “Has” or “Can” for boolean properties
    • Don’t add prefix for your controls
  • Decide between Value Types and Reference Types
  • Always Use Properties instead of public variables
  • Use Nullable data types whenever required
  • Prefer Runtime Constants over Compile time Constants
  • Prefer “is” and “as” operators while casting
  • Prefer string.Format() or StringBuilder for string concatenation
  • Use Conditional attributes when you need them
  • Use ‘0’ (zero) as default value enum value types
  • Chose between Equals() and Equal (==) operator
  • Always prefer the foreach(…) loop
  • Initialize member variables at the time of assignment
  • Initialize static member variables with static constructors
  • Use constructor chaining whenever possible
  • Minimize boxing & unboxing of objects
  • Properly utilize try/catch/finally blocks
  • Catch only that Exception which you can handle
  • Use IDisposable interface
  • Utilize LazyInitializer in most of the cases
  • Split your logic in several small and simple methods
  • Try to use Patterns & Practices like MVP/MVC/MVVM
  • Always prefer DataBinding to populate values in the UI

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