Question

Is it wise to use ‘databinding’ and the ‘Data Sources’ window in Visual Studio?

It seems to me that dragging and dropping objects from the data sources window is so easy and seamless just until something breaks, then you have to spend hours trying to figure out what went wrong with the code generated by Visual Studio.
Do serious programmers use this functionality or do they write every line of code when it comes to manipulating data in windows forms?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I’ve long had a personal opinion (and it’s just an opinion) that someone ought to be able to code without the fancy editors. I started with ASP.Net using Notepad, and had to do all the databinding manually.

That said, once I became familiar with doing it the “hard” way, I eventually tried using the drag-and drop design tools. I hated them at first, because I felt like I was losing control. BUT after a time, I got to like them because they saved a lot of time, and knowing the underlying concepts enabled me to do a better job of troubleshooting, because I figured out how the drag and drop tools work behind the scenes.

So, in my humble opinion, there’s nothing wrong with using these tools, provided that you know how to do things the hard way.