[1.0/1.1] What is the advantage of creating a DLL over a normal class?

[drattansingh]

Hi guys. I just need your opinion. Someone just gave me a DLL that they created to do some encryption. All I have to do is to access 2 methods and I got through with it, it's working.

However I was wondering, what is the advantage of creating a DLL to simply let the user of this DLL access 2 methods, why not just create a normal class and then simply create an object of that class. I mean I'm thinking of a lot of things I could put in a DLL, I have a lot of class here but then i ask myself, WHY? Why not just leave it as a class, and whenever i want to use it, simply copy the class into the project and create an object out of it.

So does anyone know what are the real advantages of creating DLLs for functionality that you could use in a normal class?

- Jennifer

[penagate]

Reusability, mainly. You can have all the code once, and many projects can use it. It aids maintainability, since you only have to edit one version of the code.

There are also tricks you can do with DLLs, like making plugin systems.

[Hack]

You have just benefited from one of the benefits.

Reusability,

You can share Dlls with other developers.

Ok, I'll grant you could copy and paste a class to notepad and send it to someone for them to copy and paste into their program, but to me it makes more sense to compile it into a Dll.

[drattansingh]

Ok I understand. Is code hiding also another advantage of this? The DLL that was sent to me I couldn't view any of the code except for the constructors and methods. Is this another advantage?

Jennifer

[penagate]

If you want it to be You're correct, it's compiled so you can't see the original code.