Uses and misuses of implicit typing

One of the most controversial features we've ever added was implicitly typed local variables, aka "var". Even now, years later, I still see articles debating the pros and cons of the feature. I'm often asked what my opinion is, so here you go.

Let's first establish what the purpose of code is in the first place. For this article, the purpose of code is to create value by solving a business problem.

Now, sure, that's not the purpose of all code. The purpose of the assembler I wrote for my CS 242 assignment all those years ago was not to solve any business problem; rather, its purpose was to teach me how assemblers work; it was pedagogic code. The purpose of the code I write to solve Project Euler problems is not to solve any business problem; it's for my own enjoyment. I'm sure there are people who write code just for the aesthetic experience, as an art form. There are lots of reasons to write code, but for the sake of this article I'm going to make the reasonable assumption that people who want to know whether they should use "var" or not are asking in their capacity as professional programmers working on complex business problems on large teams.

Note that by "business" problems I don't necessarily mean accounting problems; if analyzing the human genome in exchange for National Science Foundation grant money is your business, then writing software to recognize strings in a sequence is solving a business problem. If making a fun video game, giving it away for free and selling ads around it is your business, then making the aliens blow up convincingly is solving a business problem. And so on. I'm not putting any limits here on what sort of software solves business problems, or what the business model is.

Second, let's establish what decision we're talking about here. The decision we are talking about is whether it is better to write a local variable declaration as:

TheType theVariable = theInitializer;

or

var theVariable = theInitializer;

where "TheType" is the compile-time type of theInitializer. That is, I am interested in the question of whether to use "var" in scenarios where doing so does not introduce a semantic change. I am explicitly not interested in the question of whether

IFoo myFoo = new FooStruct();

is better or worse than

var myFoo = new FooStruct();

Read more: Fabulous Adventures In Coding

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