PODS
Plain Old Data Structures. A couple years ago, when I first tried my hand at C#, Every project I did used custom collection classes. It seems I was always implementing the ICollection Interface, dealing with enumeration as such. So much scaffolding just so that I could write foreach thing in things. My opinion is that I’ve been wasting my time. The System.Collections and System.Collections.Generic namespaces contain enough data structures to help you accomplish any task you will normally be confronted with. These data structures help you loosen the coupling between your assemblies and leverage a long history of tried and true algorithms. Combine that with generics for type safety and I’m not sure what more you could ask for. Maybe I’m being influenced by Python, Ruby, Lua et al. Their liberal use of a few (in Lua’s case One) data structure(s) make applications more readable and in my opinion more reliable. What ever the reason, I’m all for Plain Old Data Structures.