Living in the Tech Avalanche Generation

I would really like to see better error messages and exceptions in the next version of Silverlight, certainly in the Isolated Storage realm at any rate. A message of “Operation not permitted” for just about every error is not that helpful. System.IO.IsolatedStorage.IsolatedStorageException seems to cover a bit too wide a scope of error conditions for my liking. For example I would have thought that accessing a directory that doesn’t exist could clearly throw something like a “DirectoryNotFound” or something! Take the following code:

using (IsolatedStorageFile store =       
       IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication())
{
    var fileNames = from f in store.GetFileNames(“PointInCase\\*.pce”)
                    select new { Name = f };
}

Unfortunately, IsolatedStorageFile.GetFileNames(”……”) throws a very all purpose exception and message (as documented above). Generally speaking I am a big fan of the product and all for the “getting things out quicker with less” philosophy, I’m just saying that I would like to see this aspect improved a little in the next release.