Why is it a bad practice to lock the object we are going to change?

Question

Why is it a bad practice to use lock as in the following code, I'm assuming this is a bad practice based on the answers in this SO question here

private void DoSomethingUseLess()
{
    List<IProduct> otherProductList = new List<IProduct>();
    Parallel.ForEach(myOriginalProductList, product =>
        {
           //Some code here removed for brevity
           //Some more code here :)
            lock (otherProductList)
            {
                otherProductList.Add((IProduct)product.Clone());
            }
        });
}

The answers over there mentions that it is bad practice , but they don't say why

Note: Please ignore the usefulness of the code, this is just for example purpose and i know it is not at all useful

Answer 1

From the C# language reference here:

In general, avoid locking on a public type, or instances beyond your code's control. The common constructs lock (this), lock (typeof (MyType)), and lock ("myLock") violate this guideline:

lock (this) is a problem if the instance can be accessed publicly.

lock (typeof (MyType)) is a problem if MyType is publicly accessible.

lock("myLock") is a problem because any other code in the process using the same string, will share the same lock.

Best practice is to define a private object to lock on, or a private static object variable to protect data common to all instances.

In your case, I would read the above guidance as suggesting that locking on the collection you will be modifying is bad practise. For example, if you wrote this code:

lock (otherProductList) 
{
    otherProductList = new List<IProduct>(); 
}

...then your lock will be worthless. For these reasons it's recommended to use a dedicated object variable for locking.

Note that this doesn't mean your application will break if you use the code you posted. "Best practices" are usually defined to provide easily-repeated patterns that are more technically resilient. That is, if you follow best practice and have a dedicated "lock object," you are highly unlikely to ever write broken lock-based code; if you don't follow best practice then, maybe one time in a hundred, you'll get bitten by an easily-avoided problem.

Additionally (and more generally), code written using best practices is typically more easily modified, because you can be less wary of unexpected side-effects.