this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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The project is brand new (as in, the integration backend doesn't exist), I have to code and architecture it
Okay that is a bit rougher. Best of luck I suppose. Hopefully you can lean on your colleagues somewhat. If I had one piece of advice, look up the using block, it basically ensures an object gets disposed immediately when it goes out of scope, which is the closest C# lets you get to deallocating memory. The object needs to implement IDisposable tho.
To clarify for OP, the only time you need this at all is when the object has a reference to something that the garbage collector won't dispose of naturally. Things like an open file stream, db connection, etc.
You won't need to dispose of an object you created if it just has properties and methods
Circular references can also impede garbage collection, don't forget.
And to further clarify, a proper object wrapping a resource like the ones you listed will release them when it is eventually collected, in the finalizer/destructor. However, you can't know when that will happen, so we have IDisposable.Dispose() which can be used to release whatever critical resources the object is holding right away. :)
This is very wrong. Circular references are no problem for the garbage collector at all (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8840567/garbage-collector-and-circular-reference). You basically don't need to worry about manual memory management at all, if you're only dealing with managed code.
I was specifically thinking of circular event handler references, which I know was a thing at some point in the past. If .Net has improved since then, great.
You only need to use IDisposable for disposing unmanaged resources (file io etc). In modern .NET there are actually ways to perform manual memory management using malloc and delete etc, but it's unlikely you'd ever need it.
I recommend looking at a Shawn Wildermuth course that seems related to the type of project you will be creating. He has a bunch on pluralsight and his website. He was instrumental for me in my early days of learning .net and architecture.