Silverlight and LINQ for Life

eek! For my new friends that made it through my session on Silverlight 2 and LINQ, here are the resources promised.

Presentation Slides with potentially useful links…

• Silverlight 2 Overview (at the end of those stock slides are some links you’ll want to visit)
• LINQ Overview (includes why you are now related to Alonzo Church and the Lambda Calculus)

Don’t forget the Training Kits are awesome.

More Silverlight (in addition to the tons of useful stuff on Silverlight.net and MSDN)…

Remember the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight aka Prism is ready. It is a lot to digest, especially if this is the first time you are seeing it, but for the folks looking for a “what’s different vs same for WPF and Silverlight”, I really like the help that accompanies the Prism download – check out the section entitled Contrasting Silverlight and WPF.

You’ll want to review the sections on “multi-targeting” in the help if you are building WPF and Silverlight applications. An excerpt:

“A Solution to Multi-Targeting: Multiple Linked Projects
Silverlight and WPF are not binary compatible, so code and components have to be recompiled for each target environment. The approach the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight is taking is to provide guidance on structuring application and module code into multiple linked projects. Each project manages all the references, resources, and code specific to the WPF or Silverlight target environment. Code that is shared is linked between two projects so that it is automatically compiled into each target. Unit tests can similarly be shared between the two environments, so that they can be written once and run against the target code in either of the two target environments. The Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight includes tooling to help create and maintain these links.

Non-UI code and components are probably going to be the easiest to share, so adhering to separated UI patterns is essential in making sure that the UI and non-UI pieces of the application or modules are cleanly separated.”

More LINQ…

It’s unclear if I made you a fan of LINQ for Life :) but I’m sure you’ll appreciate http://linqpad.net what a cool piece of software. Nice work! So here’s a bunch of language innovations and new constructs that we walked through in C# 3.0 to review on your road to LINQ nirvana…

• Anonymous Functions (C# Programming Guide): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb882516.aspx
• Anonymous Types (C# Programming Guide): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397696.aspx
• Expression Trees: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397951.aspx
• Extension Methods (C# Programming Guide): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb383977.aspx
• Func<(Of <(TResult>)>) Delegate: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb534960.aspx
• Lambda Expressions (C# Programming Guide): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397687.aspx
• Object and Collection Initializers (C# Programming Guide): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb384062.aspx
• Partial Classes and Methods (C# Programming Guide): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wa80x488.aspx
• Query Expression Basics (C# Programming Guide): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb384065.aspx

Do read the document hanging of this blog post…it’s insightful and will reinforce the power of LINQ. And don’t forget .AsParallel() is coming :)

Oh and the Entity Stuff? Some must reads…

• Entity Framework FAQ: http://blogs.msdn.com/dsimmons/pages/entity-framework-faq.aspx
• ADO.NET Entity Framework Providers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/dd363565.aspx
• ADO.NET Entity Framework Performance Comparison: http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2008/03/27/ado-net-entity-framework-performance-comparison.aspx
• Update on LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities Roadmap: http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2008/10/29/update-on-linq-to-sql-and-linq-to-entities-roadmap.aspx

Can I come back?