Lucian's VBlog

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] VB's "static variables" are a powerful and useful time-saver. They declare a variable with a one-off initialization which is shared amongst all invocations of a instance's...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Allow a CObj in constants and attributes. Currently it's not allowed, for instance, to write Const x As Object = CObj("hello") or to pass CObj(1) into an attribute, Both...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Use [ ] for arrays. This suggestion came from Bill McCarthy. He writes that it's hard to tell the difference between array-indexing and other uses of parentheses. We...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Have different syntax for assignment "=" or ":=", versus comparison "==". Currently "=" is used for both. Bill McCarthy writes, "To determine which one it means, you...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Casts should flow from left to right. Here are some candidate syntaxes: Dim x1 = ( HtmlPage .Document.GetElementsByTagName( "a" ).First As HtmlElement ).Children...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: "unsafe" and pointer support. VB should support unsafe programming, like C#, with pointers and all that. SCENARIO: Pointer support is useful for people who write marshallers...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB ". Just to note, I've been reading everyone's comments -- thank you everyone for the feedback -- but I want to finish putting up the entire list before I get round to responding.] ...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Introduce a syntax for null-propagating field access. We could use the syntax ".?" for this. For instance, ' What the user writes Dim name = Customer .? Name ...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: In a "For Each" loop, put the loop control variable's scope inside the loop. Look at the following code: Dim lambdas(10) As Func ( Of Integer , Integer ) For x...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: An "XML pattern". Currently we have a "collection pattern" so that For Each and "New From {...}" can be used on arbitrary user-defined types. And we also have a "query...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Extension properties. We should add extension properties, just like we have extension methods. SCENARIO: In Javascript and a host of web-related DSLs, there are...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Add a #light directive, like F#, to reduce VB's verbosity . We already eliminated the dreaded "_" to make VB syntax look cleaner. We could also use layout as in Python...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Dictionary literals. You should be able to write a dictionary initializer with an easier syntax. Moreover, if the user didn't specify the type of the dictionary, then...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Reflect on your caller with __CALLER_MEMBER__ . Introduce three new "optional parameter defaults" which are called __CALLER_FILE__, __CALLER_LINE__ and __CALLER_MEMBER__...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Custom anonymous types. We should allow the user to provide a custom "anonymous type" template. This idea came from Bill McCarthy , who gave two examples: Dim customer...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Allow shared methods inside interfaces, including operators. To support this we’d also need changes inside the CLR. SCENARIO: You want to write a general-purpose mathematical...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Custom property templates. We should have an easy way for users to write boiler-plate code in their properties. This would include things like INotifyPropertyChanged...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Async and Resumable Methods. We should be able to use the "Async Programming Model" (APM) more easily, via an extra keyword "Async": Async Function Test() As Integer...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] [The first set of ideas I called "Core Ideas" because they fill in missing parts VB's current code feature set. This next set I call "Power Ideas" because they open up new ways...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Readonly auto-properties. We should allow read-only properties, which are backed by readonly fields, and can be set by either a property-initializer or through the existing...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Attribute Targets. We should allow some more attribute targets of the form < Target : SomeAttribute ( )> . Currently the only permitted targets are Assembly: and Module...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Unify the late-binder with the early-binder. Currently the late-binder uses VB8 rules, more or less, for its overload resolution. It should be updated to use VB10 rules...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: "VB-Core". Add a checkbox to the Project Properties dialog to “Embed VB runtime". With this checked then your executables and DLLs will no longer have a reference to Microsoft...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Overloading on optional parameters. Allow you to have overrides which differ only in their optional parameters. The rules for "overloaded method resolution" would have to...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Flexibility with implementing properties. Allow you to implement a property with more accessors than was specified in the interface your implementing, or the abstract class...