Relating to another question I asked yesterday with regards to logging I was introduced to TraceListeners which I’d never come across before and sorely wish I had. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve written loggers needlessly to do this and nobody had ever pointed this out or asked my why I didn’t use the built in tools. This leads me to wonder what other features I’ve overlooked and written into my applications needlessly because of features of .NET that I’m unaware of.
Does anyone else have features of .NET that would’ve completely changed the way they wrote applications or components of their applications had they only known that .NET already had a built in means of supporting it?
It would be handy if other developers posted scenarios where they frequently come across components or blocks of code that are completely needless in hindsight had the original developer only known of a built in .NET component – such as the TraceListeners that I previously noted.
This doesn’t necessarily include newly added features of 3.5 per se, but could if pertinent to the scenario.
Edit – As per previous comments, I’m not really interested in the ‘Hidden Features’ of the language which I agree have been documented before – I’m looking for often overlooked framework components that through my own (or the original developer’s) ignorance have written/rewritten their own components/classes/methods needlessly.
Also: