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in cases like one click deployment and small self installing packages (like utorrent is or used to be?) it's nice to not have to lug around DLLs.
it's also easier to write installers and maintain them when you don't have (like another commenter lamented) 2000 DLLs in a project. Even 60 is a chore.
Better to keep it to a few, maybe a dozen for middling-to-large applications.
Server code is a different story for a number of reasons.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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codewitch honey crisis wrote: Server code is a different story for a number of reasons.
Why, actually? A good layered architecture always is a good idea, no matter what it's for or where you want to deploy it. In a way, layers are just another way to separate concerns.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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because server code is more liable to need hotfixing and this is easier with highly segregated DLL code.
And you can architect things and factor them out without putting everything in separate DLLs.
because server code doesn't really need things like click-deploy - server code usually has complex deployment in place anyway, so the infrastructure for supporting all those files is already in place.
because server code needs to be updated without bringing the server down, which isn't generally an issue in user applications.
Classes are for layering. You don't always need DLLs for that.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Unless something has changed, .NET can handle DLLs in a unidirectional way. That is if DLL A references DLL B, B cannot reference A.
Ran into this on a project where most the UI would be in the EXE, some in one DLL and all the non-UI base logic in a third. Then we discovered the above and two DLLs became four. I soon left that train wreck, so I've no idea how it ended up.
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Try front-end development.
npm install whatever
Your npm folder now has 12641 files for a total of 2.4 MB.
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Are you trying to reference a ".NET Standard 2" library from a project targetting a .NET Framework version earlier than 4.7.2? That'll give you lots of tiny support assemblies to provide the "standard" features that weren't available in earlier versions. Changing the project to target 4.7.2 or later should get rid of them.
Using .NET Standard with Full Framework .NET - Rick Strahl's Web Log[^]
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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no, i'm talking about opening a VS solution and having 60 projects in it.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I'm for one or two bigger Dll's, especially if i have multiple exe's accessing the same classes.
i don't see the point of beaking a ptoject into tiny pieces, especially when they have to work with each other.
I'm still of the mindset to keep my code as small as possible because of many years of updating customer software over Dialup. if the whole compiled project got over 2mb i was doing something wrong and needed to refactor.
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All of this I agree with.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I've never used a DLL in a .NET ptrogram, because I hate dealing with the problems they create. I statically link the libraries I need to access and make the installation process clean and don't worry about DLL conflicts. That's a lesson I learn back with DOS.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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.NET doesn't suffer from most of those old problems with DLL versioning.
It is an extra dependency to drag around as part of the install base though so i feel you.
There is certainly a place for simple install bases, and i think it applies to smallish user applications and services.
sometimes i get *really* extreme and make small .net services and the like "self installing"
mysvc /install
mysvc /uninstall
then i don't even have an installer. =P
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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codewitch honey crisis wrote: When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm the only kid on the block to have a PhD and my wife still insiststhat I 'm useless.
I saw an ad the other day for some medication and it said if you experience rapid heartbeat irregular breathing and confusion, consult you doctor right away. I experienced that once, but I married her and the confusion got worse, so the doctor may have been a better choice.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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This may be starting to get into programming, but I'll ask for forgiveness rather than permission:
How do you make an application self installing?
I used to make setup projects in VS2008, but the newer versions of VS don't have that option.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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It depends on the app but what I usually do is just build my own tiny installer that writes the registry or as is usually the case, runs com registration and installs itself as a service using the service API.
The other option is to use a third party tool (is WIX still around?) to build an installer, embed that as a resource, extract it, run it as a silent install - this will give you all of the fluff of an MSI install - including a program entry in "Add/Remove programs" but that isn't that necessary for tiny apps.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Pretty sure you were under a rock or something.
Most modern code is client/server and needs a ton of dependencies, which can't be bundled into a single DLL due to license problems.
With that in mind, .NET begs separation of concerns, so during compilation, regardless of the type of code have, you end up with a gazillion Namespaced DLLs.
It would be wiser to have in Windows what NeXT, macOS and iOS started in 1988 and create single folder (*.app) masked as a self contained application where all *.so or *.dll would reside and any foreign code would simply be symlinked from source at install time. But that ship has sailed and not even UWP apps do that successfully.
So with that in mind, if you want clean code you must go the macOS route, else you'll notice that any #WinUI or Win32 code gets filled easily with DLL.
So
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Keep Calm and Keep Coding
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I haven't been living under a rock. I just don't do a lot of work with 3rd party components most of the time, and the big offenders like MonoTorrent don't have any 3rd party dependencies but still have like 40-60 projects in them. <-- those are what I'm mainly griping about.
You make an excellent point about macos and while I wouldn't necessarily package my filesystem/shell that way** it's a good idea.
** honestly, I'd just make "filesystem extensions" that allow you to traverse compound files like tars and zips and other containers like part of the filesystem - and supporting native FS calls.
That way you can just dump everything in it's own "subfilesystem" hive and have that mapped to a tar, or even a flat bin file with an OS FAT header on it.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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We focus heavily on code reuse, so DLL boundaries are focused on assembly dependencies, not on related tasks or something.
For example, we have a large C# DLL called Core that has no third-party dependencies, so a bunch of stuff is lumped together that are not related.
On the other hand, we wrap a third-party device DLL, so that wrapper is in a DLL by itself due to the extra assembly dependency.
The result is that we have a enough DLLs to allow for DLL-boundary code reuse, but we do not further subdivide them based on related source code. The compromise prevents us from having too many DLLs. We have about 40, each with different assembly dependencies.
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That makes sense
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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It was a good idea back when bandwidth was not a generous as it is now. You could update only the small DLLs or small EXE that changed during minor version changes. That made updates quicker and easier.
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You're gonna love .NET Core...........
-= Reelix =-
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that's my primary dev platform right now. I switch between that and C++/win
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I have no skin in this game. There is no one size fits all IMO. I've worked on (and perpetuated  ) projects that have gone to both extremes. From client required single 25MB "common library" for a LOB app all the way to an anal retentive "separation of concerns including the weather at compile time" sort of thing. A 10 assembly Rube Goldberg like console app factored "for optimal code reuse" for a process so incredibly narrow in scope it that probably could have been handled in a powershell script.
How about from a Visual Studio perspective.. Anyone else, cool with having to wade through 60+ projects with dozens of code files per project within an application solution? Or even just having to deal with each version of VS seemingly choking on larger numbers of projects in a solution more and more? I know I frankly love having to update my PC hardware every other version just maintain a standard of productivity and performance for the exact same codebase. Solution organization and hierarchy alone could be a soapbox unto itself. 
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i'd upvote this twice if i could for the devstudio comment
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Pixelate CENSOR
boat SHIP to hide the truth
CENSORSHIP
I thought it was a fairly gentle one for a Tuesday, but hey ho ... I win!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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To be pedantic, "censorship" would translate to "hiding of the truth" rather than "hide the truth". 
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