App vs framework design

Another rebroadcast, this time of a response to Eric Gunnerson on differences between app and framework design.

Good post. I think your distinction between designing framework APIs versus wholly-owned application code is important. Not sure what Peter Ritchie is trying to get at by disagreeing; the differences between API and application design are so large that I'm inclined to say that anyone who disagrees has never designed an API that got released into the wild and made it to v2.

One of the few .NET books worth having as a physical book, IMO, is the "Framework Design Guidelines" by Cwalina, Abrams, et al. As good as it is, though, it's very much tuned to fx level (and is very frank about that; note the title). I've had several discussion with devs who've read that and think it's scripture for app design. Most recently, I had someone tell me that we shouldn't use underscores or case-sensitivity as part our C# naming conventions for nonpublic members, because the book cautions against language specific names b/c there are .NET languages that are case-insensitive or that may not have the same support for underscores. Of course, this guy also thought FxCop was the universal standard, too. I asked him why they didn't just name it FxPope and remove the ability to turn rules off. I'm glad not to work there anymore...