Hiding from Debugger
When writing trivial get/set type properties, I have seen many developers still struggle during debugging since if they do a step into (typically F11), they end up going into the getter and setter methods as well.
Debugger related attributes have been available since early times, but somehow people seem unaware. Typically one can use DebuggerHidden or DebuggerStepThrough attributes, as shown in the following code snippet.
public int MyIntProperty
{
[DebuggerStepThrough]
get { return myVar; }
[DebuggerHidden]
set { myVar = value; }
}
This functionality has been further simplified in VS 2008 by virtue of a setting that by default is set to step over properties and operators. See the figure below (VS - Tools - Options).
The issue with this however is that it works globally so if for some properties one wishes to step into and for some one doesn't, this setting will not help and one needs to revert back to using the specific attributes.
An interesting benefit of using the automatic property feature, added with C# 3.5, is that the debugger automatically steps over such property declarations.
public int MyIntProperty { get; set; }
So apart from making the code concise and one having to think of less variable names, one can also get this side benefit of debugger step through without having to assign any attributes or enabling the setting in VS tools options dialog.
