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Asked: 2026-05-12T10:21:40+00:00

Maybe I’m slow, but I just don’t get why you would ever use an

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Maybe I’m slow, but I just don’t get why you would ever use an event that is not derived from an actual action (like clicking). Why go through the rigamarole of creating delegates and events when you can just call a method? It seems like when you create an event, all you’re doing is creating a way for the caller to go through some complicated process to call a simple method. And the caller has to raise the event themselves! I don’t get it.

Or maybe I’m just not grasping the concept. I get the need for events like OnClick and interactions with controls, but what about for classes? I tried to implement events for a class of mine, say, when the source of an item changed, but quickly realized that there was no point since I could just call a method whenever I wanted to perform a certain action instead of creating an event, raising an event, and writing an event handler. Plus, I can reuse my method, whereas I can’t necessarily reuse my event handler.

Someone set me straight please. I feel like I’m just wrong here, and I want to be corrected. The last question I asked didn’t really garner any sort of helpful answer.

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’ve always like the Radio Station metaphor.

    When a radio station wants to broadcast something, it just sends it out. It doesn’t need to know if there is actually anybody out there listening. Your radio is able to register itself with the radio station (by tuning in with the dial), and all radio station broadcasts (events in our little metaphor) are received by the radio who translates them into sound.

    Without this registration (or event) mechanism. The radio station would have to contact each and every radio in turn and ask if it wanted the broadcast, if your radio said yes, then send the signal to it directly.

    Your code may follow a very similar paradigm, where one class performs an action, but that class may not know, or may not want to know who will care about, or act on that action taking place. So it provides a way for any object to register or unregister itself for notification that the action has taken place.

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