A Peek at C# 3.0

Monday, July 17, 2006 - A Peek at C# 3.0
speaker: Richard Hale Shaw
location: Microsoft in Waltham, MA

Monday July 17th, 7pm
At Microsoft in Waltham, MA

A Peek at C# 3.0: Lamba Expressions, Extension Methods, Query Expressions and Expression Trees

The C# Team is just getting warmed up: having only just shipped support for .NET Generics, Anonymous Methods and Custom Iterators in .NET 2.0/VS2005 last Fall, they're preparing a new round of features for the next version of the language. In this session, we'll take a peek. We'll start with lambda expressions: an elegant, expressive syntax for generating anonymous methods, but without the plumbing required to use them. Then we'll look at extension methods: a slick way to define a static method in one class, but use it as an instance method in some other class, all without deriving or modifying the latter. Combine the two...and you can create query expressions to perform SQL-like and XQuery-like searches on collections (and the basis for DLINQ and XLINQ which you may have heard about), and let you store the queries – not the results, but the query itself – in expression tree data structures for re-use. We'll wrap up with a look at the newer, simpler variable itialization syntax, elegant object initialization, and the ability to define types on-the-fly (anonymous types). When we're done, you'll see how C# 3.0 will transform your day-to-day C# development into elegant, high-level expressive work.

Richard is the CEO of the Richard Hale Shaw Group, where he is a consultant, architect and lecturer who focuses on Managed Code development of distributed systems with the C# Language and the .NET Framework.

Richard is a Microsoft MVP for Visual C#, and since 2002, has been a member of the C# Customer Council: a group of hand-picked experts who consult to the C# Team at Microsoft