Why is an Add method required for { } initialization?

Question

To use initialization syntax like this:

var contacts = new ContactList
{
    { \"Dan\", \"dan.tao@email.com\" },
    { \"Eric\", \"ceo@google.com\" }
};
<         


        

Answer 1

The main reason is Syntactic Sugar.

The initializer syntax only makes writing programing in C# a bit easier. It doesn't actually add any expressive power to the language.

If the initializer didn't require an Add() method, then it would be a much different feature than it is now. Basically, it's just not how C# works. There is no literal form for creating general collections.