Question

I’m inheriting from a ListBox. Do I need to explicitly call the base constructor?

public class MyListBox : ListBox
{
   public MyListBox() : base()
   {
   }

   // or 

   public MyListBox()
   {
   }
}

Answer 1

The two options you listed will compile to identical code.

The only reason to include : base() is to explicitly denote that you are calling the base classes default constructor instead of some other constructor, by design. If left off, this happens automatically. As such, this is completely optional.

However, if you want to use a constructor other than the parameterless constructor of the base class, you would have to explicitly state this, ie:

public MyListBox() : base("Foo")
{ }

This would explicitly use a constructor which accepted a string as an argument.