Let us take a look at the following piece of code:- public void Operate(IList iList2) { iList2 = new List(); iList2.Add(1); iList2.Add(2); iList2.Add(3); } public static void Main() { IList iList= new List(); iList.Add(10); Operate(iList); Console.WriteLine(iList[0].ToString()); } Be thinking about what would the above program print to the console ? And that is what we are going to talk about in this post - simple but subtle. I saw this code at CodeProject discussions. The author was confused with why was the program printing 10 instead of 1. I am writing about this since the 'gotcha' was not highlighted in the discussion. So we passed the reference 'iList' to the function which is supposed to make it point to the 'List' that it creates and so must be printing 1. Well, a C++ programmer knowing how to program in C# would have said 'Gotcha' already. A reference (in C#), equivalent to a pointer in C++, is an entity that stores the address of an obje
Another effective [debugging] technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed "Never mind. I see what's wrong. Sorry to bother you." This works remarkbly well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. - From "The Practice of Programming" by Brian W Kernighan & Rob Pike.