Your assumption that βusing reflection means the code is wrongβ seems a bit extreme, at least in .Net. Every time you interact with types, you use reflection. Xml and Json serialization/deserialization uses reflection, and also Entity Framework. If you use mocking in test you are using reflection.
We have an excel export functionality on our sites that uses reflection because we can write 1 function and export any types we want, thanks to reflection.
A good sense of βcode smellβ is one of the most valuable programming skills. I think your βprobablyβ is justified: if youβre doing X, you should look twice at how youβre doing it. Maybe itβs right, but usually itβs not, so itβs worth a pause and a thought.
huh, youβre right! Iβm trained on a different kind of code. In C# in particular, which I use mostly to do sneaky stuff (patch/inject runtime code to, um, βfixβ it) and when I see a project that itβs too clean it smells
I also see python code (I code regular stuff in it) that could be written much more cleanly using monkey-patching
Modern .NET is reducing dependence on reflection. System.Text.JSON and other core libraries have leveraged source generation to produce AOT + trim friendly, reflection free code. But yeah, itβs not a taboo like say dynamic, itβs perfectly normal to use reflection in idiomatic C# code.
