Why Visual Studio doesn't create a public class by default? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Making class internal by default makes perfect sense to me: keep your privates to yourself and only explicitly expose parts which really need to be exposed: everything else is just implementation details and should not be visible to the outside world.

In case you want to test your internal classes, .NET 2.0 onwards introduces a new attribute called InternalsVisibleToAttribute, which

Specifies that types that are ordinarily visible only within the current assembly are visible to another assembly.

If this really annoys you, see %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7 IDE\ItemTemplates\CSharp\1033\Class.zip. This is a template which you can change to suit your needs. ReSharper has similar capability, but it's directly accessible from within th UI.

Answer 2

Because in C#, a class is internal by default. VisualStudio is therefore following the C# specification.

The following article explains access modifiers and default visibility in C#.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173121.aspx

Answer 3

Interestingly this only happens in C# - in vb.net you get a Public Class by default.

Personally, i prefer a public class by default as generally other classes need access to it. (most of my work is in the data layer though)

Answer 4

It is good practice in all areas of code to keep things as restricted as possible. Without specific reason for being otherwise, everything should be private, readonly (better yet const), and static. If a variable, method, or property can be private, make it private. If it can't be private, but can be protected, make it protected. If it can be readonly, make it readonly. If it can be static, make it static. The same is true for classes: they should be internal by default, and made public only when you have decided that this is a class you wish to export.

Answer 5

You could change the templates for a C# class - Usually located in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC#"

or even create your own template.

Answer 6

Personally I prefer it as is, It forces you to actively think which classes you want to make public.

It ultimately defaults you into a hopefully cleaner API design and hence better more friendly software. You wouldn't want to expose the inner workings of your code, which would inevitably happen if everything defaulted to public.

This is somewhat subjective, personally I prefer everything to off and turn on only what I need not the other way round.