March, 2008

I didn't know about this until recently: You can take a delegate to an extension method as if it was an instance method: http://csharpindepth.com/ViewNote.aspx?NoteID=92 The delegate's target will be set to the instance. Nice!

Several interesting blog links I'd like to share.

• Charlie Calvert - Charlie's blog is where the C# community meets the C# team. We are proud that the communication is bidirectional - not only we are sharing information with the community, but we are also actively listening to feedback (see for example Jon Skeet's wish list for C# 4.0 or Vladimir Reshetnikov's findings about the C# compiler and spec). I highly recommend the Future Focus series - please let us know what do you think about our plans for the next version of C# and Visual Studio. You have a unique opportunity to influence the C# 4.0 features before they are set in stone.
• Vladimir Reshetnikov - if you like digging deep into the C# grammar, the spec and the dark corners of our compiler, this blog is for you. Vladimir is also known as "nikov".
• Jacob Carpenter - Jacob finds interesting ways to use the C# language features to better express the program in the language. See also some recent posts on generic type parameter chaining (applied to implement pattern-matching in C# as fluent API).
• Chris Smith - Chris sits in the office across the hallway and works on the F# QA team. He posts about the F# language and has a lot of nice samples to learn from. This is the right guy to ask, among other things, about pattern-matching, using type-system to check measurement units and Project Euler.
• Jon Skeet - Jon had a great series of posts recently about the most-wanted new features in C# 4.0.

The order of this list is randomized and highly non-deterministic.