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POIn a strongly-typed world, why isn't ASP.NET MVC's fragile dependency on naming conventions frowned upon?
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  1. POIn a strongly-typed world, why isn't ASP.NET MVC's fragile dependency on naming conventions frowned upon?
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    copied!<p>Since forever, strongly-typed objects have been a foundation of object-oriented programming. Fast-forward to 5 minutes ago, when working with the Entity Framework and MVC3, I was forced to add this to my Web.config:</p> <pre><code>&lt;connectionStrings&gt; &lt;add name="_MY_EXACT_CLASS_NAME_DbContext" connectionString="Data Source=blahblah.../&gt; &lt;/connectionStrings&gt; </code></pre> <p>Great, My entire application depends on an arbitrarily-chosen name in an XML attribute. Is this really what modern programming looks like? Misspelling a class name is a serious offense, one the compiler leads us directly into fixing, but in this case, I'll just get a runtime exception message. If Mr. aforementioned exception message in a good mood, he'll point me toward Mordor, and I'll trudge off toward another Mount Doom of wasted debugging hours to destroy the invisible One-Typo-To-Rule-Them-All.</p> <p>The same goes for Controllers:</p> <pre><code>routes.MapRoute("BE_CAREFUL","{controller}/{action}/{id}", new { controller = "ONE_FALSE_MOVE_AND", action = "BUT_I_SWEAR_IT_SAID_BUILD_SUCCEEDED" } ); </code></pre> <p>It seems like things come and go in waves. Strongly-typed objects had their day in the sun, and now we're all girl-next-door over the anonymous "var". I'll admit, being coy about your type stirs up a lot of sexy scenarios - especially knowing you don't have to do any setup work - but here's The Actual Question:</p> <p><strong>How do the forefathers of object-oriented programming feel about our "advancement" of their art by adding a bunch of wishy-washy, do-sorta-whatever anonymous constructs while at the same time creating fragile dependencies on naming conventions?</strong></p> <p>For all we know, MVC4 might suddenly require that all names be preceded by exactly 4.7 spaces followed by lolcat ASCII art. Why? Because yes, that's why. Take a moment and marvel at the fact that you just witnessed the birth of a naming convention. Obviously, this is seriously solid foundational material for a flagship framework.</p> <p>So, if there's one thing I want my entire codebase to both functionally and philosophically depend on, there's nothing more mission-critical to the mathematic logic of programming than..... Microsoft's® English-Language Naming Conventions!</p> <pre><code>&lt;/sarcasm&gt; &lt;/griping&gt; &lt;!-- resume enjoying all of MVC's amazing features, after eating any humble pie served up in the comments --&gt; </code></pre>
 

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