• Max Payne (unregistered)

    What does B.B. stand for, anyway? Backstabbing Bastard?

  • Aaron (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    Ah, the Java way. However you have to remember this is the .Net way where XML is king (MicroSoft gave us the disaster known as SOAP lest we forget). I'm sure there's something in this wonderful .Net IDE I keep on hearing about that hides the XML format behind a nice table widget that lists name value pairs. If not, then when faced with XML format then the originators of the compiled class of configuration options probably thought they were just replacing one WTF with another.
    A Java programmer who is contemptuous toward Microsoft and its tools without knowing the first thing about them? I'm shocked, shocked!
  • rgz (unregistered)

    Believe it or not I think I understand the reasoning here, the chief reason is Intellisense... Intellisense and static analisis... thats two reasons, Intellisense, static analisys and safe refactoring!

    The Configuration.AppSettings hash key is a string and as such it doesn't pop up with intellisense, you have to look for it in the documentation, the config file , or somewhere else in the code. Shall you make a mistake, static analisis won't reveal it at compilation, and test should be very thorough to detect it as it doesn't fail hard. Then you have refactoring, refactoring symbols is a joy but refactoring strings is scary, because of static analisis, probably.

    We in fact write static wrapper classes for configuration, each property mapping a key in the configuration file.

  • Watson (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    Watson:
    Doug:
    What a surprise, then, that .Net automatically reads these configuration file settings into the singleton hashtable Configuration.AppSettings, which you can access from any part of your application without having to initialize or run any XML libraries.
    Where .NET, obviously, uses some desperate Perl hacker's collection of regexps.

    Yes, because 

    "([^=]+)=(.+)"
    is so desparate and such a huge collection ...

    And doesn't go very far in parsing XML....
  • dorothy mckernan-fennell (unregistered) in reply to Max Payne

    i got a message about not having disfiguration how do i get it

  • CS (unregistered)

    This article is absolute garbage, the author must never have actually delivered software to a client before.

    If he did, he'd understand that clients sometimes like to change the configuration of the software without waiting for you to rebuild it and redeploy it every time.

    Work involved with changing the mail server using app.config:

    1. The user does it themselves. No work for me to do except maybe tell them how or provide a knowledge base with it. (or in my particular case let our support department explain it to them)

    Work involved with changing the mail server using your way:

    1. get the latest version of all project files from source control,
    2. find the file containing the MailServerName parameter,
    3. change the value,
    4. compile,
    5. test,
    6. run unit tests,
    7. check the file back in, and
    8. deploy.

    At least you got that last part right.

  • Nomad (unregistered)

    Well,

    They were .NET programmers. You should not have high expectations after all...

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