Continuing the discussion with Einstein , the prototypcial C++ developer. Einstein often creates software solutions to some pretty complex problems. He spends a lot of time trying thinking about different approaches to the problem, and tries to pick...

Checked exceptions are a very hotly debated topic in some circles, particularly for experienced Java developers moving to, or additionally learning, C#. Here are some resources that discuss the issue in depth: The Trouble With Checked Exceptions...

Using the as operator differs from a cast in C# in three important ways: It returns null when the variable you are trying to convert is not of the requested type or in it's inheritance chain, instead of throwing an exception. It can...

C# defines a number of aliases for CLR types. They may be used interchangably, and even mixed together, e.g. string x = new System.String(' ', 5); . These are the aliases defined: Alias CLR type string System.String ...

Put simply, an event gives more limited access than a delegate. If an event is made public, code in other classes can only add or remove handlers for that event; they can't necessarily fire it, find out all the handlers for it, or remove handlers...

All constants declarations are implicitly static, and the C# specification states that the (redundant) inclusion of the static modifier is prohibited. I believe this is to avoid the confusion which could occur if a reader were to see two constants...

C# defines the following character escape sequences: \' - single quote, needed for character literals \" - double quote, needed for string literals \\ - backslash \0 - Unicode character 0 \a - Alert (character 7) \b - Backspace...

A string literal such as @"c:\Foo" is called a verbatim string literal . It basically means, "don't apply any interpretations to characters until the next quote character is reached". So, a verbatim string literal can contain backslashes (without...

All this talk about E&C, I thought it'd be a good idea to talk about the personas. Ian has a good description of the personas we use when talking about Visual Studio users. There's a language correlation, too. VB primarily targets Mort, C# targets...

Most people don't write every single piece of their app. Programs are linked together with shared libraries so that we can share functionality. Of course, we have to actually share these libraries for this to work. With .Net and COM components, this usually...

Sean asks for it, and Andy blogs some of the thinking behind no E&C for C# . I really like using E&C when writing C++, and I know that VB users find it pretty valuable. Seems strange that we wouldn't have it for C#, yeah? When we talk about...

previously posted with the labs but highlighting here because lots of folks keep asking me for it...