Eh, I haven’t touched C# since 2001. I agree that the more verbose style is more explicit, and so more readable. That said, I can figure most of the new style out from context.
=> is clearly a closure declaration operator, similar to JavaScript.
x ??= y is shorthand for “assign y to x if x is not set, and return x” which is kind of nice.
There must also be some shorthand going on for getter properties being the same as methods w/o an arglist (or even a ()).
The only part that has me stumped is the unary question-mark operator: privatestatic Singleton? _instance = null; I can think of a half-dozen things that could be, but I cannot decide what it’s doing that the original question-mark-free version isn’t.
As others said, it means nullable, but to put it in more intuitive, less-jargony way - it’s a question mark bc you don’t know if the value is actually there or not. It could be a Singleton, but it isn’t until you check if there is a value. Whereas if you have, idk, int a no question mark, then you’re saying you actually have data.
Essentially with C# 8, they “removed” null and reused the idea of null references in creating what is essentially an Option like in other languages. You either have some data of some type, or none (a null reference, in this case). By default, everything has to be there. Then when you need null, e.g. you may not have something initialized or an operation could fail, you explicitly grab for it. Thus it reduces null pointer bugs. If you don’t need nullability, you can ensure that you don’t accidentally write in an issue. It safety checks statements and parameters.
When you’re an old-head who recognizes the old style it is easy to read the old style.
When you’re a new-head who recognizes the new style it is easy to read the new style.
When you’ve never seen C# before, they’re both gibberish.
When you’ve got experience with both, it can get a little confusing but you’ll catch on without too much difficulty.
But its fucking wild to think the left side is more readable than the right side, simply because it is more verbose.
I have no C# experience and both styles look fine to me. /shrug
I have loads of experience with C# and both styles look fine to me. /shrug
Eh, I haven’t touched C# since 2001. I agree that the more verbose style is more explicit, and so more readable. That said, I can figure most of the new style out from context.
=>is clearly a closure declaration operator, similar to JavaScript.x ??= yis shorthand for “assign y to x if x is not set, and return x” which is kind of nice.There must also be some shorthand going on for getter properties being the same as methods w/o an arglist (or even a
()).The only part that has me stumped is the unary question-mark operator:
private static Singleton? _instance = null;I can think of a half-dozen things that could be, but I cannot decide what it’s doing that the original question-mark-free version isn’t.As others said, it means nullable, but to put it in more intuitive, less-jargony way - it’s a question mark bc you don’t know if the value is actually there or not. It could be a Singleton, but it isn’t until you check if there is a value. Whereas if you have, idk,
int ano question mark, then you’re saying you actually have data.Essentially with C# 8, they “removed” null and reused the idea of null references in creating what is essentially an Option like in other languages. You either have some data of some type, or none (a null reference, in this case). By default, everything has to be there. Then when you need null, e.g. you may not have something initialized or an operation could fail, you explicitly grab for it. Thus it reduces null pointer bugs. If you don’t need nullability, you can ensure that you don’t accidentally write in an issue. It safety checks statements and parameters.