Question

I’ve seen some guides or blogs that say using this to access a class’s own members is bad. However, I’ve also seen some places where professionals are accessing with this. I tend to prefer explicitly using this, since it seems to make it clear that the thing I’m accessing is part of the class.

this.MyProperty = this.GetSomeValue();

Is there some advantage or disadvantage to using this? Is it simply a stylistic preference?

Answer 1

Having gone from using this for years, to finding not many people (atleast in my experience) use it, I eventually changed. The benefits I can see of having this-less code:

• I use underscores: _myVar for private variables, which don’t need a this as they’re always member variables.
• For method calls it is very obvious that it’s part of the class. You would prepend the type name if it wasn’t.
• (C#) Private variables and parameters are always camel case.
• If your class is so big it’s getting confusing you’ve got an issue with cohesion and separation of concerns anyway.
• (C#) Visual Studio color codes types, so you know if you’re using a property or type:

e.g.

someclass.Method(1);
SomeClass.StaticMethod(1);

I can see that if you don’t use the underscores naming convention, and have a large method with a weighty body it could lead to some confusion.

Static methods or properties can occasionally confuse things, but very rarely.

You will obviously always need the this keyword when passing references, for example:

someclass.Method(this);
var someclass = new SomeClass(this);

(I write C#, but my answer relates to Java)