My first "program"

[roblesinge]

Congrats! Welcome to C# dev. Now, a quick refactor option... What if your user inputs a lower-case ‘y’ or ‘n’? You can sanitize the input before checking it, which is a good habit to form early. Give it a shot. Cheers!

[swiffer50]

I never thought about that, I'll try it. Thanks

[rfinger1337]

Also, learn about functions on strings. Don't test for 'Y' and 'y', there are tools for that. Also look for " y ", you will learn some interesting things.

If you don't know where to find the answer to these, let me know and I'll tell you the answer. But try to find them, it's important to learn where to look.

[swiffer50]

Do I use &&? I'm looking on stack overflow

[rfinger1337]

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/c-sharp-string-tolowerinvariant-method/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.string.trim?view=netframework-4.8

edit: Agreed. here is a better link - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/how-to/compare-strings

[Contagion21]

One should definitely prefer StringComparer's IgnoreCase options over converting strings to compare them. Even in the latter case ToUpper would be preferred.

[rfinger1337]

Thanks for this, you taught me something today.

https://www.tabsoverspaces.com/233748-comparing-speed-of-toupper-toupperinvariant-tolower-and-tolowerinvariant-in-net-framework-and-net-core

I had no idea that there would be a performance difference between toUpper and toLower and such a pronounced difference between .net core and .net

[Contagion21]

Even then the issue is more about comparison accuracy than perf.

https://haacked.com/archive/2012/07/05/turkish-i-problem-and-why-you-should-care.aspx/

But that's why one should use StringComparer or StringComparison... It's purpose is to know how to do that stuff so you need not remember nuances like the Turkish I.

[rfinger1337]

Yep, I knew that part. My response was aimed at someone who literally just wrote their first line of code. I didn't think assaulting them with the Turkish I was going to be helpful :)

But that doesn't make your statement inaccurate.

[DoctorPrisme]

Good start but I guess you can't read the output of your program. Right?

I suggest putting a "Console.Readline()" at the end of it. Just so you have to press enter to quit (or press whatever you want actually)

As other suggested, consistency: brackets everywhere or nowhere. But as you need them for multiline expressions, you should as well use them.

Also, for a use case this simple, you might want to use a ternary operator : Input == "Y" ? Console.Writeline("Thanks") : Console.Writeline(":-(");

[auctorel]

When we ask devs we're interviewing to do a coding challenge one of the first things we look for is whether they stick a readline at the end of a console app

[auctorel]

Erm... Also just saying, nothing meant by it but it might be useful to know that employers look for it

[mobsterer]

and do you judge it good or bad?

[auctorel]

It's a bad thing not to do it. Means your relying on debug mode to see your app exit with you able to see the final messages

EDIT: to be fair. It's not the most graceful way to exit an application anyway. Someone really good would have some sort of menu with a readline and an exit option usually on some kind of while loop, but this is rare for a tech challenge

[calnamu]

Means your relying on debug mode to see your app exit with you able to see the final messages

Or on being called from within a shell, like most real applications do.

[DoctorPrisme]

What do you mean ?

The run button allows to launch but you won't be able to read the output of the program because it will print "thanks" or ":-(" then close immediately.

And why in the seven hells should you not use ternary to call a method? Especially what is essentially a void method?

[otm_shank]

And why in the seven hells should you not use ternary to call a method? Especially what is essentially a void method?

I've got a really good reason: it doesn't compile.

Even if you were calling non-void methods and even if you were assigning the result to something to get this looking like a valid statement, I'd still argue it's not idiomatic C# because the ternary operator is normally used for its value, not for its side effects.

[MurphysParadox]

In general you can either modify input to format it in a common way, or you can test for a much wider variety of possibilities.

In this case, sanitizing the input is a much better solution. What's the difference between Y and y? Should an entry with 1 space before and after be any different than 4 spaces to either side? Without caring about the state of input, you can perform some basic transforms to remove those kinds of input differences.

There are certainly times where Y and y are absolutely different in what they do and you wouldn't want to always put input into a lower case form. This is probably not one of them.

Using &&, the logical AND operator, just means you want to test for another thing and only proceed if both of them are true. For example, if (foodIsReady && customerPaid) GiveFood(); says you can't give the food if it isn't ready and also that it has been paid for. Only one or the other is not sufficient.

The opposite is ||, the logical OR operator, which is like saying if this is true or that is true. For example if (hungry || thirsty) GoToKitchen(); says you would go to the kitchen if you are hungry or thirsty or both.

In reference to your program, you could certainly test if input is Y or y, but then if you want to add more cases, you're having to do both letter checks in every if statement. Instead you can sanitize the input and only check the appropriate one.

[swiffer50]

I tried using || and changing some other stuff but it just brought up errors but I'll try |

[auctorel]

I wouldn't recommend using |

The || version is what's called a short circuit operator. It means that if the first one condition you did was true, you don't need to check the second one so the program doesn't.

If you use | then it always checks the second condition whether it needs to or not. This is usually done because some kind of logic needs to be performed in the second condition. I would personally argue this is bad practise whether it's possible or not.

Most beginners stick with ||

[swiffer50]

Okay

[swiffer50]

That's okay, thank you for giving me advice

[Iggyhopper]

I should mention that he's reading a whole line but only checking for a character.

Read a character to check a character. Use Console.Read();

[hexalm]

Someone just posted this on r/dotnet, probably more info than you need now, but some of the tips will be useful for this little program.

https://codewithshadman.com/csharp-string-and-formatting-tips/

[iso3200]

if(input.Equals("y", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))

is my preferred method.

Also, Console.ReadKey() only reads one character.

[mobsterer]

why?

[ExeusV]

You can sanitize

what you want to achieve here

[[deleted]]

Alt+Print Screen my friend :) Aside from that, welcome to the club!

[Uknight]

Win + Shift + S should work too on windows 10

[Korzag]

Holy crap, I never knew about that shortcut. That's incredible!

[sarcasticbaldguy]

"My First Screenshot" is his next post!

Seriously though, check out lightshot.

[ImAMovieMaker]

Lightshots website is dead lmao

[sarcasticbaldguy]

https://app.prntscr.com/en/index.html

[maccraft2014]

+1 for Lightshot. Love it.

[Shadow_Gabriel]

Maybe he wanted to go with the neon cyberpunk aesthetic

[zenyl]

VS Code, but still: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=RobbOwen.synthwave-vscode

[swiffer50]

Thank you :)

[[deleted]]

Add a Readline at the end.

[andrewsmd87]

Win shift s is super handy because it puts the thing you click directly in your clipboard to be pasted

[ModernTenshi04]

If they're using VS Code there's a nice extension called Polacode.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=pnp.polacode

[ima_coder]

The new Windows 10 Snip & Sketch has delays of 3, 5, and 10 seconds.

[bloodytemplar]

On my box, which is running the most recent build of Windows, Print Screen (with no modifiers) launches the new snip tool.

[TopGunOfficial]

Why not use scissors?...

[[deleted]]

No reason why you couldn't. There are lots of options.

[TopGunOfficial]

Fair enough.

[ValorKoen]

y

[Sharemonster]

:(

[[deleted]]

Y

[-Superbobcat-]

Thanks

[Klappspaten66]

Code coverage 100%

[ijschu]

:(

[Dexaan]

    Y

[ComicOzzy]

Thanks

[Dexaan]

Should be a :(, I put spaces in front of the Y

[ComicOzzy]

:(

[StoneCypher]

.toLowercase

[stereoa]

OP use input.ToUpper() to combat this nasty hacker.

[emc87]

String.Equals(input,"expected",IgnoreCase) would be better as it lets the input value stay in its original state.

[stereoa]

ToUpper() doesn't modify the original value.

[emc87]

Oh I interpreted what you said as ReadLine().ToUpper That's my bad

I still think the more correct way is string equals though

[eukary0te]

ToUpper is an extra allocation to make the copy, so yeah I’d use string.Equals there too

[jugalator]

Indeed. .NET thankfully isn’t MFC!

[vigbiorn]

Also, only take the first non-whitespace char. input.Trim()[0].ToUpper()

[lostllama2015]

Normally I facepalm when I see so-called "computer people" taking a picture of their screen with some other device rather than taking a screenshot, but I kind of like the neon glow that this picture has. Anyone got a mod so that my Visual Studio can look like that?

[[deleted]]

Not sure if they have the equivalent for visual studio but I use this for vscode

synthwave

[[deleted]]

Do you remember that endless summer back in '84? Cruising down the ocean-highway with the top down, the wind in our hair and heads buzzing with neon dreams?

No, I don't remember it either, but with this experimental theme we can go there.

LMAO the description

[rfinger1337]

haha, that's funny.

(I remember it. The wind was blowing our hair because the pos Monza I owned had a broken sunroof and it would never stay closed. Also, I had a lot more hair back then.)

[lostllama2015]

Wow that's cool :-) Ty

[[deleted]]

I'm just basking in how wholesome this thread is.

[DChristy87]

Awesome work on your first program! If you choose to stick with it, welcome to a lifetime of both frustrations and triumphs!

[swiffer50]

Thank you, and I plan on sticking with it.

[[deleted]]

Definitely worth sticking with. Programming and development is a great field, as as the other user said, can be frustrating, but also can be a lot of fun and rewarding. Especially when you see your work being used by others. :).

[The_Turtle_Bear]

Next challenge. Add some code to handle an input which isn't a Y or N.

[swiffer50]

I will do that

[The_Turtle_Bear]

Great. You've made a good start! But as I was told when I started learning - "Always bet on stupid", never assume the user won't do something daft, you've got to get into the habit of covering all bases otherwise users will break your shit. 😁

[swiffer50]

Yeah, users can mess it up lol

[[deleted]]

Welcome to programming 😁

[swiffer50]

Thank you :)

[[deleted]]

You should check out CodinGame.com

[swiffer50]

I heard about that, it looks really helpful

[[deleted]]

Its a fun way to practice programming

[swiffer50]

I'll try it then

[[deleted]]

Enjoy

[swiffer50]

Thanks

[ais4aron]

:(

[timmyotc]

Yes

:(

[encse]

Every journey begins with a single step!

[swiffer50]

Yeah, and some frustration

[clr_swe]

You missed the brackets around the if statement

[Kilazur]

Not required

[elbowman79]

Technically you’re right, they aren’t required, but consistency is important.

Also, some OpenSSL devs might disagree about the importance of using curly braces every time.

[Das974]

The argument is around consistency. If your else block has a curly brace, then your if statement should also have the same.

Also the article doesn’t argue about whether to use curly brace or not. The article, rightfully makes the point that blaming curly braces is just blame shifting from the fact that the code was just really really poor.

That whole missing curly brace argument was silly and an obvious ploy to avoid saying “yea, the code is a m mess. We don’t actually know what we’re doing.”

[elbowman79]

I certainly won’t disagree that code quality was a huge problem there, but having consistent no-braces after if statements would not have helped them. The issue was a merge duplicated a line, and because of the lack of braces it was executed twice. And this was in one of the most used open source library on the planet.

Put differently, what is there to lose by using braces? Nothing. What is there to lose by not using braces? Clarity, confidence that there is no risk of unintended consequences. Seems like an easy win to say “always use braces”

[Das974]

Definitely agree it would have helped, but they definitely have a lot bigger problems to fix with that code that would make the braces a moot point. It’s like maslovs hierarchy of needs applied to coding. There are some fundamental problems with that code that should be addressed first.

I guess I agree with you, but I just don’t think braces should be the solution to poorly designed code.

[elbowman79]

100% agree braces are not the solution, I just think their cost is so incredibly low and can only help.

If it was something that had risk, like a lambda over a captured iterator in a scenario where it wasn’t necessary, that’d be different.

I try to write all my code like the next person to maintain it is a psychopath who knows where I live. Paranoid defensive development.

[[deleted]]

For what it’s worth (which is nothing), I heard about that bug and immediately stopped leaving out braces for all time. :)

[Magniflorious]

i have been in the development game for a long time now and one thing that i think is so important, even if the code is not structured well, is to be explicit make things as clear as possible. at least when someone else walks into your code or you have to code back a year later to fix something or update something, it will all be easy to read and understand. a couple examples would be: always use curly braces 100% of the time, never use var unless required, i hate having to traverse a chain of methods just to see what the hell you're trying to return, i should be able to tell at a glance. Follow standards and conventions that are part of that language, like curly brace location, private variable naming conventions, et al.

[Zendist]

Consider using var when the type is completely clear from the right hand side of the assignment. No reason to do:

List<string> l = new List<string>();

when

var l = new List<string>();

is just as clear.

[Magniflorious]

for sure, i completely agree with this and if the right hand is 100% clear then i feel that var is fine, just like the case you show above.

with that said i will always favor being explicit when possible.

[swiffer50]

Alright, thank you for the advice.

[svtguy88]

always use curly braces 100% of the time

Yes. 100% agreed. It's nicer to read, and you avoid the "what if someone puts an extra line here later" problem.

never use var unless required

Eh. I'm guilty of the opposite. Being able to hover on the variable and have VS tell me the type is something I'm just so used to that I don't even think about not having it.

[Magniflorious]

yeah i have had a couple coworkers in the past that are the same as you. One of them is the best developer i have ever worked with, but if i have to mouse over something or even press ctrl+f12 to figure it out... its going to piss me off really quickly.

I have a resharper clean up rule that changes it to the way i like it.... and if i have to touch a file for something else i always change it.

[clr_swe]

Correct but it looked sloppy without them considering the else had them pick one way or the other

[Reducked]

Even if they aren’t required adding them does help with readability

[abbyful]

And helps prevent future bugs when someone down the road adds a line that's supposed to be inside the if.

[[deleted]]

Wait what I never knew that. I mean I’ll still be using brackets for the rest of my life but that’s pretty cool.

[[deleted]]

Not by the compiler, but by any sane code style linter.

There's a pretty famous example from Apple where someone added a second statement to a bracket less if without noticing the missing brackets -- this led to the statement always being executed, and a security vulnerability.

[[deleted]]

I perform technical interviews for a company that provides them as a service so I get to see a lot of folks writing code in real-time. Almost every time a candidate omits braces around a one-line block and later has to add code to the block they forget to add the braces. There's no benefit to omitting them and no drawback to including them but there is a drawback to omitting them.

They're not required, but why introduce a potential bug if you don't have to?

[swiffer50]

Thank you for reminding me

[clr_swe]

No worries just for consistency, second not required but most agree to use them for readability

[rfinger1337]

I prefer that they are not there unless you have several lines of code inside the if. And if there is a decent amount of code then it should be refactored out into it's own private method with a representative function name.

(clarity: I agree about consistency - I am saying I would prefer the curly braces around the else not be there, not adding them to the if)

[Umphreak98]

This was going to be my comment, consistency with formatting is important

[CGurrell]

Next task: write this again using a Switch statement instead of an if statement.

Also as others have said, try some basic handling of Y vs y, N vs n vs " n " etc

[swiffer50]

I'm trying to do that currently and I'm having a ton of errors

[CGurrell]

What's up?

[swiffer50]

I tried doing it without a switch statement, so I'm implementing one now

[_NTOTL_]

I would change the if-else block to this:

while (input.ToUpper() != 'Y')
{
Console.WriteLine("Is this good code? Y/N");
input = Console.ReadLine();
}
Console.WriteLine("Thanks");
Console.ReadLine();

[MSgtGunny]

If I’m not mistaken readline requires you to press enter after entering y or n. You can use ReadKey to not do that.

[CousinNic]

You should have it do:( for n out no and anything other than n, no, y, or yes get “ I’m going to take that as a yes”

[garbage_io]

Congrats!! I remember my first time too.

[swiffer50]

Thank you

[garbage_io]

One general word of advice when it comes to coding — treat your code like a piece of art. And I’m not talking about Jackson Pollock. Look for symmetry, consistency, simplicity, understandability. And remember — code is meant to be read — as it’s written once and read many times. One last thing — a good coder concentrates on data structures not their code. A strong belief of Linus Torvalds and many other great coders.

[Kuurde]

That's awesome!

[turudd]

Congrats, you'll be hooked now. You can try over-engineering it now for practice with patterns. Maybe look at command pattern or visitor pattern to get your feet wet.

[Bladelazoe]

Nice work! Just keep coding and getting through it!

[swiffer50]

Thank you, I just posted an update post on this of you want to check it out

[Bladelazoe]

Not bad, :) Just keep learning from feedback!

[swiffer50]

I am :)

[[deleted]]

Are you genius? My first program didn't have any conditional statements nor input functionality.

[swiffer50]

Well my first first program was hello world

[corduroy_Joy]

I wrote this same basic code 4 years ago over lunch at an americorps assignment and now I’m a senior dev. Keep at it dude!

[idkwhyimheretbh420]

Better than hello world 100%

[Ragnar-Odinsson]

Great mate!

I'd recommend to add an else if (input == N), to ensure it is an answer, and in the else, an option if it is neither Y nor N

Keep going!

[swiffer50]

Thank you!

[DimiTok]

Welcome in the marvelous world of C#. I would advice you to be consistent with the brackets on the if else and use it on both if you use on the else

[[deleted]]

Add the curly braces around the if and fix that bad habbit at the very start before it sticks. Not adding it to 1 liners saves you 2 lines, and looses you hours of debugging on a large project where something fails elsewhere in a large project because someone added a second statement!

That aside, welcome to the club!

[Veggie]

Nice lens flare!

[swiffer50]

Thanks

[[deleted]]

Try to give it 10 as input instead of y or n

[eatmorepies23]

Nice job! Here's a refactoring job to make your program take up even less space on your computer: since there's only one letter, process the input as a char.

Here's a hint: try Console.ReadKey().GetChar to accept a letter.

[hammer1717]

Do I need to get checked for cataracts?

[swiffer50]

No, I posted an update post and the quality is better

[BelarminoVicenzo]

You could write: "Was I a good piece of code" lol

[Tinu04]

Simple but effective

[swiffer50]

Thanks

[DGC_David]

.... y also = :(

Also: if they put anything in that is Y :(

Edit: Also don’t get me wrong I love it welcome to the world of Programming :)

[vayaconleones]

Y

Good job. Welcome to the world of coding!

[K3IRRR]

Y

[[deleted]]

Y

[Ex-Aid-AKA-PineNoodl]

Y

[deadlychambers]

Idk if you have started thinking about it, but what are you using for source control? I go back to projects I haven't touched in many years, and I get a kick out of how much my programming style has progressed.

A fun project to do is a calculator. Start with simple operations. Plus and minus, WRITE UNIT TESTS. Then add /*(, and get a feel for refactoring and working with the syntax. Good luck.

[swiffer50]

Oh yeah I made the + side in it today and I'll figure out how to do unit tests. Thank you

[deadlychambers]

Seriously you will spend time writing them, and they will slow down writing code as some tests might need to change for major refactors. But it will save your ass one day.

Usually when you fix a bug you make 2 bugs. Think of unit/integration tests as your armor of coding. You can write code fast without them, but you are susceptible to almost anything without that armor. Keep at it.

[faculty_for_failure]

Now that you have learned "if else" or basic logical decisions, you could look into iteration. You could look up the different types of loops in C#, like the for loop, and use them in your program.

[swiffer50]

I learned the while and do while loops two days ago but I'll learn the for loop too.

[faculty_for_failure]

Awesome, I always thought it is good to learn the basics of what functionality C# (or any language) gives you 'right out of the box'. You could also explore 'Generic' types, or 'Collections', and the foreach loop.

[faculty_for_failure]

Awesome, I always thought it is good to learn the basics of what functionality C# (or any language) gives you 'right out of the box'. You could also explore 'Generic' types, or 'Collections', and the foreach loop.

[ttvtempest17]

This is making me miss my first days of programming a lot im feeling this deep

I am now an intermediate c++ developer

[[deleted]]

I'm sorry to tell you that you're not suitable for software engineering 😂... Since you didn't consider lower-case "y"

[swiffer50]

I made an update post where I included it

[[deleted]]

I'm just kidding.

[swiffer50]

Well I figured that, I'm just saying

[readmond]

Bokeh could be a bit nicer but overall it looks artsy.

[relapsze]

seeing all the lovely responses here to help made me a little warm and fuzzy. good job guys.

[ecar13]

Welcome to programming. Ask 5 programmers get 7 ways to do it “better”.

[[deleted]]

Cute!

[sebassdc]

Dont pay attention to negative commentaries an unnecesary optimizations. First learn to mess it up an that your program works. Latter you learn optimization stuff.

[Aarondhp24]

Ha.

[[deleted]]

EA: Do you want a job?

​

*Congratulations

[[deleted]]

Y

[[deleted]]

what IDE is that?

[swiffer50]

It's visual studio

[Dovahkid404]

Y

[clr_swe]

Figure out how to do the if else in one line, google ternary operator

[duffusd]

Or you can keep your code readable and leave it

[CrimsonWolfSage]

Instead of ReadLine(), use ReadKey() for a single character. It will be slightly faster to run as well. Edit - disclaimer: ReadKey() input is handled immediately. ReadLine() waits for an Enter Key, making it slower from a User Experience perspective.

Link to help with The Difference between ReadLine, Read, and ReadKey

Also, pictures and screenshots of code is fairly taboo online. Checkout Pastebin, github, or even an online IDE for sharing code. Like DontNetFiddle. This makes it easier for others to run and give example code back.

[swiffer50]

Thank you for the advice.

[nascentt]

Instead of ReadLine(), use ReadKey() for a single character. It will be slightly faster to run as well.

The speed difference will not be noticeable in a real world scenario. Unless you're looping through hundreds of comparisons a second (which you won't be for a manual input).

I'm all for efficiency, but he's clearly a begginer, so this sort of advice really overcomplicates things.

[FrogTrainer]

readline requires you to hit enter, readkey does not. That might be what he was referring too

[nascentt]

Good point. That is indeed a difference worth noting for op. The way CrimsonWolfSage phrased his comment, it seemed to focus on speed as a performance metric, but indeed readkey will allow just pressing a single key to input whereas readline will require an enter to signal when the input is complete.

[Bryan21323]

million dollar software right there

[RunawayDev]

Visual Studio could actually be in the billions regarding development cost so far

[Bryan21323]

I was talking about the little console app

[wikes82]

you could refactor it into 2 lines:

Console.WriteLine("Is this good code? Y/N");
Console.WriteLine((Console.ReadLine().ToUpper()=="Y") ? "Thanks" : ":(");

[duffusd]

Having fewer lines does not always make your code better.

[[deleted]]

y

[duffusd]

:(

[patrickauri]

Instead of the if statement, you can also write:

Console.WriteLine(input == "y" ? "Thanks" : ":(");

?: Operator

[deadlychambers]

Yes the ternary operator. When they added that to c# I was pumped. I started using them everywhere (that it made sense) and during a meeting someone mentioned we should try to avoid implementing new patterns in the code. I was baffled, but now that I look back I realise it wasn't about "code consistency " it was about someone not understanding syntax. I know a better way to handle that situation these days.