One more easy one. I want to "sort" a list into a random, shuffled order. I can do that by simply randomizing whether any two elements are greater than, less than, or equal to each other: myList.Sort((x, y) => (new Random()).Next(-1, 2)); That generates...

Did you notice how last time my length comparison on strings was unnecessarily verbose? I could have written it like this: static int ByLength(string x, string y) { if (x == null && y == null) return 0: if (x == null) return -1; if (y == null...

Suppose I want to sort a bunch of strings into order first by length, and then, once they are sorted by length, sort each group that is the same length by some other comparison. We can easily build such a device with higher-order programming: static Comparison<string>...

The mutable List<T> class provides an in-place sort method which can take a comparison delegate. It's quite handy to be able to sort a list into order by being able to compare any two elements, but you have to make sure you get it right. First off...

Holy goodness, did you guys ever find a lot of additional ways in which an "eliminate variable" refactoring can go wrong. Just a few of your observations: (again, in every case, "x" is eliminated.) Any situation in which x is being treated as a variable...

My colleague Kevin works on (among many other things) the refactoring engine in the C# IDE. He and I were at the end of last year discussing the possible cases for a hypothetical "eliminate variable" refactoring. I thought that it might be of interest...

Welcome to 2011 everyone; I hope you all had as restful a time as I did over the winter break. We’ll get back into language and tools design next time; today’s post is dedicated to the memory of my friend Frank, an old and dear friend of my whole family...