Design Guidelines for Class Library Developers

The .NET Framework's managed environment allows developers to improve their programming model to support a wide range of functionality. The goal of the .NET Framework design guidelines is to encourage consistency and predictability in public APIs while enabling Web and cross-language integration. It is strongly recommended that you follow these design guidelines when developing classes and components that extend the .NET Framework. Inconsistent design adversely affects developer productivity. Development tools and add-ins can turn some of these guidelines into de facto prescriptive rules, and reduce the value of nonconforming components. Nonconforming components will function, but not to their full potential.

These guidelines are intended to help class library designers understand the trade-offs between different solutions. There might be situations where good library design requires that you violate these design guidelines. Such cases should be rare, and it is important that you provide a solid justification for your decision. The section provides naming and usage guidelines for types in the .NET Framework as well as guidelines for implementing common design patterns.

In This Section

  • Class Library
    Documents each of the public classes that constitute the .NET Framework.