If you have some programming experience, you’ll notice that the preceding examples don’t use variable prefixes. Many longtime C/C++ and VB programmers are in the habit of adding a few characters to the start of a variable name to indicate its data type. In .NET, this practice is discouraged, because data types can be used in a much more flexible range of ways without any problem, and most variables hold references to full objects anyway. In this book, variable prefixes aren’t used, except for web controls, where it helps to distinguish among lists, text boxes, buttons, and other common user interface elements. In your own programs, you should follow a consistent (typically companywide) standard that may or may not adopt a system of variable prefixes.