File Buz

OO Parenting by MS

OO Parenting by MS

I really love object orientation (OO), because it is so easy to build software using it; and it is so easy to totally screw up using it. Today I was surprised when I was trying to find out some information about the Select method in System.Windows.Forms.Control. The documentation for the Select method states what the method does and doesnt do, but it also informs what inheriting classes that does not support it. Of course, every parent class should know everything about the inheriting classes; and have documentation on everything

Excerpt from the documentation:
The Windows Forms controls in the following list are not selectable. Controls derived from controls in the list will also not be selectable.
* Label
* Panel
* GroupBox
* PictureBox
* ProgressBar
* Splitter
* LinkLabel (when there is no link present in the control)

Cmon, why put the Select method in the Control class if they know that many inheriting classes will not implement it at all. This solution/idea reeks of bad design! If a Control does not support a certain functionality, then that class should not have a method pretending to support the functionality. But this is not the first time I found a similar problem with the "design" of Windows Forms, so I will stop whining here....

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