I've written a lot about this already, but I think one particular point bears repeating. As we're getting closer to shipping C# 4.0, I'm seeing a lot of documents, blogs, and so on, attempting to explain what "covariant" means. This is a tricky word...

Interestingly enough, no one correctly guessed why I needed code in the compiler to transform a method argument list into a form that batched up the side effecting expressions, stuck their values in variables, and then called the method with the side...

Upon submitting that specification for review, even before seeing my code, Chris found a bug and an omission. The omission is that I neglected to say what happens when the ref variable is an index into a fixed-size array buffer. As it turns out, that...

Joel had a great series of articles many years ago about the benefits of writing functional specifications , that is, specifications of how the product looks to its users. I want to talk a bit about technical specifications, that is, a specification of...

(This is part two of a two-part series on the loop-variable-closure problem. Part one is here .) UPDATE : We are taking the breaking change. In C# 5, the loop variable of a foreach will be logically inside the loop, and therefore closures will close over...

(This is part one of a two-part series on the loop-variable-closure problem. Part two is here .) UPDATE : We are taking the breaking change. In C# 5, the loop variable of a foreach will be logically inside the loop, and therefore closures will close over...

Three baseball umpires are having lunch together. The first umpire says "Well, a lot of them are balls, and a lot of them are strikes, but I always calls 'em as I sees 'em." The second umpire says "Hmph. I calls 'em as they are ." The third umpire...

I've returned from a brief vacation, visiting friends on the island of Maui. I'd never been to that part of the world before. Turns out, it's a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, entirely made out of volcanoes. Weird! But delightful. ...

C# has many rules that are designed to prevent some common sources of bugs and encourage good programming practices. So many, in fact, that it is often quite confusing to sort out exactly which rule has been violated. I thought I might spend some time...