Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

23.4. Properties and State

The SimpleTest classes provide functionality through public methods. If you're familiar with class-based programming (as described in Chapter 3), you'll remember that classes can also store information in private member variables and provide property procedures that allow the calling code to modify this information. For example, a Person class might have a FirstName property.

When you use properties and store information in member variables, you're using stateful design. In stateful design, the class has the responsibility of maintaining certain pieces of information. In stateless design, no information is retained between method calls. Compare the earlier SimpleTest class, which uses stateless design, to the stateful ...