What should I use the "My" namespace for in VB .NET?

Question

I'm considering building a framework for VB.NET, and using the My namespace to plug it into VB seems like a reasonable idea. What is "My" used for?

Answer 1

The purpose of My, as I understand it, is to be an easy shortcut to certain API tasks that are common but hard-to-find or hard-to-use. You probably shouldn't completely subsume your framework under My. (For one thing, C# people using your framework may get grouchy.)

Instead, you should design it as a normal framework. When you're finished, make a list of some common tasks that people might want to use your framework for. See whether any of those could be useful to have under My, especially where there are classes or methods that can be used in a number of ways, but they have one or two really common usages that can be abbreviated with My.

This article shows how to extend My, and it has a section at the end that describes a few design guidelines to follow: Simplify Common Tasks by Customizing the My Namespace

As to your main question, when coding in VB .NET, I use My as often as I can. It reduces a number of operations to one line of code.

Answer 2

I really like the "My" Namespace in VB.NET and I always use it in my WindowsForms applications, because it is very intuitive.

I use primarily these categories:

• My.Computer: primarily for file system and network purposes
• My.Application: Version number, current directory
• My.Resources: Access to resources used by the application residing in resource files in a strongly typed manner.
• My.Settings: very handy

I think, if your extensions for My of your framework fit well, then many VB.NET programmers would appreciate them.

Answer 3

I've used My in my VB.NET projects, and I don't feel guilty about it. I am primarily a C# guy, but until I transitioned my company to C#, we were a VB shop. In my mind, the My namespace is a nice piece of syntactic sugar. Just as I'm not embarrassed to use C#'s coalesce operator and other sugar, I'm not embarrassed to use VB's sugar, either. (To an extent; I won't use the classic VB functions that .NET still exposes.)

That said, never put anything in that namespace. It's Microsoft's namespace, and just as you wouldn't put anything under System nor Microsoft, don't put anything under My. It will cause confusion later on -- if not for you, then for others who maintain your code. Create your own namespace for your own code.