Design Guidelines

Becoming familiar with the design guidelines of the .NET Framework libraries will help you in using the framework and creating your own classes.

A well-designed managed class library is:

  • Consistent: Similar design patterns are implemented across libraries.

  • Predictable: Functionality is easily discoverable. There is typically only one way to perform a specified task.

  • Secure: The library is callable from semi-trusted code.

  • Multilingual: Functionality is accessible to many different programming languages.

For several reasons, you are strongly advised to treat these guidelines as prescriptive when building your own library. Developer productivity can be demonstrably hampered by inconsistent design. Development tools and add-ins will ...

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