Because I'm a geek, I enjoy learning about the sometimes-subtle differences between easily-confused things. For example: I'm still not super-clear in my head on the differences between a hub , router and switch and how it relates to the gnomes that...

There are three good reasons to disallow unsafe blocks inside an iterator block. First, it is an incredibly unlikely scenario. The purpose of iterator blocks is to make it easy to write an iterator that walks over some abstract data type. This is highly...

A while back I posted some commentary I did for the Scripting Summer Games where I noted that there is an isomorphism between "pull" sequences and "push" events. Normally you think of events as something that "calls you", pushing the event arguments at...

Now that you know why we disallow yielding in a finally, it’s pretty straightforward to see why we also disallow yielding in a catch. First off, we still have the problem that it is illegal to “goto” into the middle of the handler of a try-protected...

There are three scenarios in which code could be executing in a finally in an iterator block. In none of them is it a good idea to yield a value from inside the finally, so this is illegal across the board. The three scenarios are (1) normal cleanup,...

A long and detailed discussion of how exactly we implement iterator blocks would take me quite a while, and would duplicate work that has been done well by others already. I encourage you to start with Raymond’s series, which is a pretty gentle introduction...

There is a constant tension in language design between solving general problems and solving specific problems; finding the right spot on the general-to-specific spectrum can be quite tricky. The design of iterator blocks yields (ha ha) a germane example...

Pop quiz: What does the following code do when compiled and run? class C { public static void M(string x) { System.Console.WriteLine("static M(string)"); } public void M(object s) { System.Console.WriteLine("M(object)"); } } class Program { static...

No technology today. I have not done a post on relationship advice in ages! Compare and contrast these two conversations: ****** Version One: Alice : Thanks for having lunch with me. I suppose you know what I want to talk about. Eric :...