Why Custom Attributes in .NET Give Me Nightmares

2 days ago

The author criticizes .NET's custom attribute storage mechanism as poorly designed, causing significant issues.
Custom attributes are metadata attached to .NET binaries, stored in metadata tables with a blob signature for arguments.
Enum arguments in custom attributes require expensive type resolution to determine underlying types, adding complexity and overhead.
Type arguments in custom attributes use fully qualified name (FQN) strings, which are inefficient and avoid deduplication, unlike other .NET signatures.
FQN strings lead to bloated binary sizes, slower parsing, and inconsistent type resolution behaviors due to complex syntax and optional assembly specifiers.
The design choices for custom attributes deviate from .NET's efficient metadata table system, but changes are unlikely due to backward compatibility concerns.

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