Why dependency properties?

Question

Why did Microsoft go the route of making dependency properties and dependency objects instead of using reflection and maybe attributes?

Answer 1

Dependency properties solve a different usage scenario than reflection and attributes would solve.

Dependency properties provide a single, consistent API for doing things that standard properties cannot handle.

• The allow classes to provide a large number of properties without overhead (since they're only created, statically, when used, not once per class). For
• The dependency property system handles things like Attached Properties in a consistent manner as standard dependency properties.
• Dependency properties provide a clean API for change tracking as well as validation.
• Dependency properties provide property value inheritance.
• Dependency properties provide great performance benefits when data bound.