Is it always best practice to declare a variable?

Question

I'm new to C# and any form of programming, and I have a question that seems to divide those in the know in my university faculty. That question is simply: do I always have to declare a variable? As a basic example of what I'm talking about: If I have int pounds and int pence do I need to declare int money into which to put the answer or is it ok to just have:

textbox1.Text = (pounds + pence).ToString(); 

I know both work but i'm thinking in terms of best practice.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

In my opinion the answer is "no". You should, however, use variables in some cases:

• Whenever a value is used multiple times
• When a call to an expensive function is done, or one that has side-effects
• When the expression needs to be made more self-explaining, variable (with meaningful names) do help

Basically, follow your common sense. The code should be self-explaining and clear, if introducing variables helps with that then use them.