MSDN Mag weighs in on the Framework Design Guidelines book

Scott Mitchell's did a review of the Framework Design Guidelines in his MSDN- ToolBox Column... My favorite part of the review was again around the annotations... It is fun to see what folks pull out and find interesting:

What I liked best about this book was the style in which it was written. Rather than being a stodgy tome on framework design, it is very readable thanks to the many "discussions" interjected throughout the book by various Microsoft architects. These discussions, which appear in offset boxes after particular guidelines, give the book a very conversational feel, almost as if you're sitting in on a meeting at the Microsoft campus.

For example, in the "Type Design Guidelines" chapter, after the guideline that reads, "Do favor defining classes over interfaces," Krzystof Cwalina adds that in talking with developers on the team, many have regretted shipping some API as an interface, while no one has regretted shipping a class. Jeffrey Richter then interjects, recommending that framework developers use both an interface and then an abstract base class that implements the interface, as this gives the end-user developer the luxury of choosing whether to define their own type based on your interface (for convenience) or abstract base class (for flexibility).

Never fear, one day I will get back to adding real content to this blog.. thanks for your indulgence until then ;-)