Fluent interfaces and inheritance in C#

Question

I\'ll show a problem by example. There is a base class with fluent interface:

class FluentPerson
{
    private string _FirstName = String.Empty;
    private          


        

Answer 1

Is a fluent interface really the best call here, or would an initializer be better?

 var p = new Person{
      LastName = "Smith",
      FirstName = "John"
      };

 var c = new Customer{
      LastName = "Smith",
      FirstName = "John",
      AccountNumber = "000",
      ID = "123"
      };

Unlike a fluent interface, this works fine without inherited methods giving back the base class and messing up the chain. When you inherit a property, the caller really shouldn't care whether FirstName was first implemented in Person or Customer or Object.

I find this more readable as well, whether on one line or multiple, and you don't have to go through the trouble of providing fluent self-decorating functions that correspond with each property.