Edit and Continue Coming to C#

Microsoft has announced that EnC is coming to C# in Visual Studio
2005. John Robbins at Wintellect doesn’t like it. I have mixed
feelings about having the EnC feature in C#. The only thing I have ever
seen EnC used for is making bad code even worse. I’ve watched numerous
VB hacks sit their in a perpetual state of EnC as they debug a program
into existence. This leads to very poorly designed (if you can call them
that) programs. More often then not, they manage to introduce an equal
or greater amount of defects by using this feature. In my world, one
does not write production code using EnC. I personally prefer
test-driven development. Since I’ve started writing unit tests with
NUnit, I have found myself spending less and less time using the
debugger.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I like using EnC when playing
around with a new API or component. I like the ability to sit there and
twiddle with the component and get instant feedback. For me, that is the
way I learn new things best. When it’s all said and done, though, I
think I would prefer the inconvenience of having to do the
code-compile-run dance than to have to deal with code written using EnC.