Why is there a default instance of every form in VB.Net but not in C#?

Question

I\'m just curious to know that there is the (Name) property, which represents the name of the Form class. This property is used within the namespace to uniquely identify the

Answer 1

VB is adding a load of code into your project behind your back, basically.

The easiest way to see what's going on is to build a minimal project and look at it with Reflector. I've just created a new WinForms app with VB and added this class:

Public Class OtherClass    
    Public Sub Foo()
        Form1.Show()
    End Sub
End Class

The compiled code for Foo looks like this when decompiled as C#:

public void Foo()
{
    MyProject.Forms.Form1.Show();
}

MyProject.Forms is a property in the generated MyProject class, of type MyForms. When you start diving into this you see quite large amounts of generated code in there.

C# could do all of this, of course - but it doesn't typically have a history of doing quite as much behind your back. It builds extra methods and types for things like anonymous types, iterator blocks, lambda expressions etc - but not in quite the same way that VB does here. All the code that C# builds corresponds to source code that you've written - just cleverly transformed.

There are arguments for both approaches, of course. Personally I prefer the C# approach, but that's probably no surprise. I don't see why there should be a way of accessing an instance of a form as if it was a singleton but only for forms... I like the language to work the same way whether I'm using GUI classes or anything else, basically.