A couple of weeks ago, Phil Haack (developer of SubText)?posted about?some utility type functionality?that most people reinvent rather than use what's built-in. And he's completely right. Most of what he writes about I have either seen others build or have built myself - and it's not NIH syndrome, it's IIB syndrome (Ignorance Is Bliss).

The .NET framework is so big that for some of the more obscure classes, you either have to see it used in a code sample or randomly stumble upon it. Yeah, they're all documented on MSDN, but how many of you have actually gone out to MSDN and 1.) tried to read through their dry documentation, and 2.) looked through all of the namespaces? By the time you were able to do it, a new framework would be out!

Anyway, the article is definitely worth a read - now I just have to remember these!

Also, read through the comments - there's some nice tips about other oft-reinvented functionality, as well as some?gotchas to watch out for with the utilities listed.

Technorati Tags: .NET Framework