Anonymous types, dynamic keyword and other reasons I like C#

A few years back I wrote about how I was starting to like C# better than Java.

Even after using Java 8, I still think C# is easier to work with, and provides more syntax conveniences for day-to-day webapp development.

Two such conveniences in C# are anonymous types and the dynamic keyword. If you want to define an object whose only purpose is to define a structure to serialize to JSON, in C# you can do something like

return Json(new {foo = "bar", baz = new[] {"asdf", "zxcv"});

This is more concise than defining a nested list/map structure. Not quite as concise as Javascript or Python, but close.

Similarly, you can declare a variable dynamic, which turns off compile-time type checking and does dynamic dispatch at runtime similar to Groovy. This allows you to dereference a structure like the one above:

dynamic x = new {foo = "bar", baz = new[] {"asdf", "zxcv"}};
Debug.Assert(x.foo == "bar");
Debug.Assert(x.baz[0] == "asdf");

With dynamic you get the best of both worlds – static compile-time type checking and IntelliSense most of the time, with the ability to selectively turn it off.

My other complaints about Java’s lack of syntax conveniences are mainly still valid:

  • Java 8 now provides object initializers, but double-brace initialization looks like a hack and some people discourage its use. Java 8 collection initializers seem to be just a special case of double-brace initialization.

  • Java still doesn’t have a var keyword to automatically declare the compile-time type of a variable the same as the right-hand side of its assignment expression.

  • You still have to remember that the Java equality (==) operator only tests for instance/reference equality, which means the 99% of the time you care about value equality, you have to remember to use equals. So you still have to waste time and brain cells remembering if some variables are defined as int or Integer to choose between x == y and x.equals(y). (It’s actually even worse – if x and y are both Integer, x == y might not break obviously until the values get above a certain threshold.

Written on November 7, 2015