Lucian's VBlog

[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: "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 "] 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 "] 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 ". 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 How to await a storyboard, and other things ] Sometimes we want to await until a button has been clicked. Once place where this is useful is, for instance, when displaying the message “Click button to continue”...

[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: 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: 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: Allow a non-empty default partial method. (This suggestion from Bill McCarthy ). For instance, Partial Class C Partial Private Sub f( ByVal s As String ) Console...

[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 How to await a storyboard, and other things ] In my app, I want to await a drag operation. Here’s how I’d like to await it: Private Async Sub rectangle1_PointerPressed(sender As Object , e As PointerRoutedEventArgs...

[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...

Hello from PDC! The VB session was here: http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/FT32 - I'll post the code from it shortly, and let you know when the video goes live. The talk covered many of the new features in VB10, and showed a Silverlight4 application...

[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: 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: 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 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...