Weekly Dev Tips

Smarter Enumerations Enumerations are a very primitive type that are frequently overused. In many scenarios, actual objects are a better choice. Sponsor - DevIQ Thanks to DevIQ for sponsoring this episode! Check out their list of available courses and how-to videos. Show Notes / Transcript Enums are an extremely common construct in applications. They provide a simple way to give labels to numeric values. They're especially useful for efficiently capturing a set of flag values by using binary AND and OR operations on values set to powers of 2. However, as primitive value types, they don't have the capability to add behavior to the values they represent, and this often results in a particular flavor of the primitive obsession code smell that I discussed in episode 12. One of the first signs that you're stretching the limits of an enum in C# is if you find that you want to display the names associated with the values to the user, and some of the names should have spaces in them when displayed. For example, you m