Archives
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C# vNext Revisited
I often rethink or have additions to my posts. This topic of what's coming in C# vNext is definitely one of them. I'm always looking for ways to push the envelope to see what I can get from the language. I have to credit such people as Scott Bellware and others to look more outside of the C# bounds and look to such things as Ruby and even F# to really open my eyes to the possibilities of this language. I'd love to see more F# features in the language as they have slowly seeped in and now pretty ubiquitous.
What I like
I enjoyed Jeremy Miller's post about what he likes about C# 3.0. I'd definitely have to concur with a lot of those things such as his and some of my own:
- Object Initializers
- Lambda Expressions
- Extension Methods
- Anonymous types
So, what am I eh about? Well, automatic properties is one of them. Not doing much for me just yet, especially for my domain models. Also partial methods have a particular use, but once again, it looks like a large potential for abuse. Bart De Smet has a pretty good writeup on them though worth checking out here. If you check out Wes Dyer's blog, he also has a good example and why you would use them. To me, it looks like Aspect Oriented Programming in a way, but I much prefer using Windsor interception, and hopefully soon the StructureMap interception.
Do We Know Any More?
Charlie Calvert, C# Community Liason, and Mads Torgersen, C# Program Manager, wrote a post recently about the future focus of C#. The first topic in this series is about dynamic lookup. What dynamic lookup is, is the ability to distinguish a type at runtime instead of static compile time.
But why is this useful? Well, in order to interact with dynamic runtimes, this is the best way to do it. The idea of using this for COM interop is also pretty interesting. I've done more than my fair share in this lifetime. Many of the things you see on PInovke.NET are ones that I either put up there or refined quite a bit, especially while using unsafe C#.
With this upcoming, could Duck Typing be far behind? After all, it has been proposed at least for VB9, although dropped. Of course in .NET, it's already supported on the foreach keyword as noted by Krzysztof Cwalina due to the fact you don't need to implement IEnumerable, and only need GetEnumerator(). But, will it go any further than that like Ruby?
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Why am I here?
Sorry I never posted a welcome notice to this blog. Anyhow, welcome to my new home on the net. If you don't know me already, my former blog is at geekswithblogs.net. If you're here for the first time, great!
So, who am I? Well, I live and work in the Washington, DC area and actively involved in the .NET and Agile side of things in the area. I run DC ALT.NET with the help of Phil McMillan, who ought to blog more BTW.. I'm also active in planning the ALT.NET Open Spaces, Seattle event coming in April. We're going to have a great crowd there, but space is limited.
Anyhow, my interests are many including:
- Agile/XP
- Functional Programming (FP)/Object Oriented Programming
- Compilers
- ASP.NET
- BizTalk (pays the bills)
- SharePoint
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CMAP Meeting 2/5 - User Experience (UX)
Central Maryland Area .NET Professionals (CMAP) is holding their next meeting on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008. This month looks to be a great one by Michael Wolf on the User Experience (UX). In the agile methodology, it is quite an essential piece that often gets overlooked. It's obvious too many times after looking at The Daily WTF to see plenty of evidence of that.
Alon Salant posted a good set of Agile User Experience Resources that's pretty extensive on how UX fits into the Agile/XP practice. This includes the Yahoo UX group, articles, practices and so on. I've used this as a resource a couple of times when thinking about UX.
Anyhow, here are the details:
UX is the new UI: It's not the framework, it's how you use it.
By: Michael Wolf
As developers we love our frameworks and the elegance of code. Yet we often spend so much time staring at code we forget the essential user centered problem were trying to solve. In addition, due to the amazing and ever evolving frameworks/ tools / controls we have at our disposal, we often forgo what's most usable for what's most available. In this talk we will delve into these problems using examples written in Microsoft Silverlight, including the winning solution from the Microsoft Phizzpop Design Challenge LA.
About Michael Wolf - Michael Wolf has spent over a dozen years building web applications and is currently a Senior Rich Internet Application Developer for global leader Cynergy (www.cynergysystems.com). He recently was a member of the winning team for Microsoft's PhizzPop Development Challenge in LA, successfully developing an interactive media platform for a mock media conglomerate in 3 days using Microsoft Silverlight technology. Starting with his first web application in vi using Mosaic in 1994, Michael has been heavily involved in application development holding numerous senior development positions at Washington, DC and Baltimore, Md base companies including Real Magnet, Blue Atlas Interactive and Bally's Total Fitness.
Date/Time:
2/5/2008 - 6:30PM
Location:
HCC Business Training Center
6751 Columbia Gateway Drive
Columbia, MD 21046
In addition to all of that, Mike is part of DC ALT.NET, and it's great to have him as part of our group. Hope to see a great turnout! -
Continuing Adventures in F#
Update: Added more F# samples and the foundations of functional programming
This is an ongoing adventure into F# as I think it has quite a future as a first-class citizen in the .NET space. Now, if we can say the same for Spec#. I don't mean to be a link blog by any means, but it helps me to gather these things up as I go along:
In a previous post, I've begun a pretty fun adventure into F#. I'm still working on quite a few samples to post here shortly, but in the mean time, I've collected a bunch of samples that I think are pretty cool and well worth a look. I'm currently digging through Robert Pickering's book "Foundations of F#". I'm especially interested in his DSLs which I hope to cover here shortly.
For those interested in the foundations of functional programming, check out Bart De Smet's blog for his series on the subject:
- F# Latest release
Don Syme discusses the latest release of F# and the differences - Fibonacci Sequence in F#
Scott Hanselman gives Fibonacci sequence code for many languages including F# - Sorting odds and evens in F#
Claudio Cherubino takes a sample from LINQ in C# and translates to F# - Practical F# Parsing by Harry Pierson
Semantic Productions (1)
Semantic Productions (2)
The Abstract Syntax Tree
Syntactical Productions (1)
Syntactical Productions (2)
Active Patterns
Unit Testing
The Parse Buffer - Improve your C# with F#
Compare line for line samples of C# versus F# - Really Digging F#
Samples such as factorials and high-order functions - Project Euler problems in F#
Problem #1 in F#
Problem #1 (alternate)
Problem #6
Problem #9 - Infinite Cheese Fractal with WPF and F#
- SQLCLR Integration with F# Part 1
Lewis Bruck covers a simple SQLCLR integration using F#
Wrapup - F# Latest release
