Programming Atlas

Client-Side Versions of .NET Classes

In addition to adding OOP-like features for JavaScript coding, Atlas implements client classes that are analogs of some .NET classes. By doing this, two goals are achieved:

• Functionality missing in JavaScript is provided as part of Atlas.

• .NET developers with little JavaScript experience can use some familiar elements in their code.

In my opinion, this is one of the areas where upcoming Atlas versions will most certainly add more features, so the following list of classes is neither exhaustive nor final. Two useful features that are already available are Sys.StringBuilder and enumerations.

Sys.StringBuilder

One of the new features introduced in .NET 1.0 that really paid off in terms of performance was the introduction of the StringBuilder class. The problem is that applications are usually full of code like this:

string s = "", t;
while () {
  t = <value>;
  s += t;
}

The problem lies in s += t, which is equivalent s = s + t. Whenever this code is executed, a copy of s and a copy of t is created in memory, then concatenated, and finally saved back into s. However copying s could be unnecessary. StringBuilder uses an optimized algorithm for string concatenation.

In JavaScript, this approach does not have any measurable effect on memory (in fact, the implementation seems to be a tick slower than the standard approach). On the other hand, performance is not as large of an issue for client script as it is for server code. Nevertheless, for consistency with ...