Good Case For Interfaces

Question

I work at a company where some require justification for the use of an Interface in our code (Visual Studio C# 3.5).

I would like to ask for an Iron Clad reasoning t

Answer 1

Code decoupling. By programming to interfaces you decouple the code using the interface from the code implementing the interface. This allows you to change the implementation without having to refactor all of the code using it. This works in conjunction with inheritance/polymorphism, allowing you to use any of a number of possible implementations interchangeably.

Mocking and unit testing. Mocking frameworks are most easily used when the methods are virtual, which you get by default with interfaces. This is actually the biggest reason why I create interfaces.

Defining behavior that may apply to many different classes that allows them to be used interchangeably, even when there isn't a relationship (other than the defined behavior) between the classes. For example, a Horse and a Bicycle class may both have a Ride method. You can define an interface IRideable that defines the Ride behavior and any class that uses this behavior can use either a Horse or Bicycle object without forcing an unnatural inheritance between them.