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POWhy should I avoid using Properties in C#?
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copied!<p>In his excellent book, CLR Via C#, Jeffrey Richter said that he doesn't like properties, and recommends not to use them. He gave some reason, but I don't really understand. Can anyone explain to me why I should or should not use properties? In C# 3.0, with automatic properties, does this change?</p> <p><strong>As a reference, I added Jeffrey Richter's opinions:</strong></p> <p>• A property may be read-only or write-only; field access is always readable and writable. If you define a property, it is best to offer both get and set accessor methods.</p> <p>• A property method may throw an exception; field access never throws an exception.</p> <p>• A property cannot be passed as an out or ref parameter to a method; a field can. For example, the following code will not compile:</p> <pre><code>using System; public sealed class SomeType { private static String Name { get { return null; } set {} } static void MethodWithOutParam(out String n) { n = null; } public static void Main() { // For the line of code below, the C# compiler emits the following: // error CS0206: A property or indexer may not // be passed as an out or ref parameter MethodWithOutParam(out Name); } } </code></pre> <p>• A property method can take a long time to execute; field access always completes immediately. A common reason to use properties is to perform thread synchronization, which can stop the thread forever, and therefore, a property should not be used if thread synchronization is required. In that situation, a method is preferred. Also, if your class can be accessed remotely (for example, your class is derived from System.MashalByRefObject), calling the property method will be very slow, and therefore, a method is preferred to a property. In my opinion, classes derived from MarshalByRefObject should never use properties.</p> <p>• If called multiple times in a row, a property method may return a different value each time; a field returns the same value each time. The System.DateTime class has a readonly Now property that returns the current date and time. Each time you query this property, it will return a different value. This is a mistake, and Microsoft wishes that they could fix the class by making Now a method instead of a property.</p> <p>• A property method may cause observable side effects; field access never does. In other words, a user of a type should be able to set various properties defined by a type in any order he or she chooses without noticing any different behavior in the type.</p> <p>• A property method may require additional memory or return a reference to something that is not actually part of the object's state, so modifying the returned object has no effect on the original object; querying a field always returns a reference to an object that is guaranteed to be part of the original object's state. Working with a property that returns a copy can be very confusing to developers, and this characteristic is frequently not documented.</p>

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