Charlie Calvert's Community Blog : Community Convergence

Community Convergence LVII

Charlie Calvert — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:14:17 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-seventh issue of Community Convergence. In this post I’ll focus on new articles from the C# team, as well as events taking place at PDC.

From the C# Team

Eric Lippert

Closing over the loop variable considered harmful
Three Umpires (The Compiler Calls ‘em as it Sees ‘em)
Simple names are not so simple
Simple names are not so simple, Part Two, plus, volcanoes and fried foods
I have a Fit, but a lack of Focus.

Kirill Osenkov

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Known Issues – Part 2
A million-dollar pen vs. a pencil
Bezier Curves and Car Manufacturers
Irony (.NET compiler construction framework)

Luca Bolognese

Luca at PDC 2009 next week

Dustin Campbell

Naming Anonymous Types with Generate from Usage

Sam Ng

Charlie Calvert

From others at Microsoft

Mitsu

Read/Write selector in C# 3 then C# 4

Jason Zander

Scott Guthrie

Scott Hanselman

Brad Abrams

Dan Fernandez

Downloads and Announcements

Community Convergence LVI

Charlie Calvert — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:21:00 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-sixth community convergence. As you probably know by now, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 has been released on MSDN and will be available to the general public on Wednesday, October 21, 2009. I’ve worked with the team to create a wide range of technical material designed to support this release, and I will call out each item out here in this post. Be sure to check out the new How Do I and Interview videos, the samples, and the great posts by Alexandra Rusina. In other news, we’ve gotten word that the SoCal code camp will be held right after PDC this year. If you live in the LA area, this is a great chance to see some of the Microsoft speakers who will be presenting at PDC.

From the C# Team

How Do Videos on C# 4.0

How Do I Use Named and Optional Parameters in C# 4.0? (with Sam Ng)
How Do I Use COM Interop and Office in C# 4.0? (with Sam Ng)
How Do I Use Covariance and Contravariance in VS 2010 Part I? (with Eric Lippert)
How Do I Use Covariance and Contravariance in VS 2010 Part II? (with Eric Lippert)

How Do Videos on the Visual Studio 2010 IDE

How Do I Use Highlight References in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE (with DJ Park)
How Do I use Code Snippets in the Visual Studio IDE (with Karen Liu)
How Do I Use Generate from Usage in Visual Studio 2010? (with Karen Liu)
How Do I Use the Call Hierarchy? (with DJ Park)
How Do I Step with the Debugger in Visual Studio? (with Dustin Campbell)
How Do I Refactor my Code in Visual Studio Part I? (with Dustin Campbell)
How Do I Refactor my Code in Visual Studio Part II? (with Dustin Campbell)

Interview Videos on Channel 9

C# 4.0 Dynamic with Chris Burrows and Sam Ng

Alexandra Rusina

Eric Lippert

What is this thing you call "thread safe"?
As Timeless As Infinity (On Delphi, VB Script and Exceptions)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (On Constructors)
What's the difference between "as" and "cast" operators?
Why No Extension Properties?
Why does char convert implicitly to ushort but not vice versa?

Kirill Osenkov

Luca Bolognese

Becoming really rich with C#

Beta 2

Visual Studio 2010 Samples
MSDN Subscribers: Download the Beta
A Video on How to Download and Install the Beta
Walkthroughs and Related Content

From the C# Community at Microsoft

Scott Guthrie

Scott Hanselman

Dan Fernandez

MSDN Magazine

Mitsu

Surface Academy Toolkit with Card Game, plus Dick Lantim!

From the Community

September INETA Newsletter

Community Convergence LV

Charlie Calvert — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:19:28 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-fifth release of Community Convergence. The big news this week is the release of an updated version of CodeRush Xpress, version 9.2. This upgrade to the popular set of free enhancements to the VS IDE has important performance and memory improvements. You might also be interested to hear that the Popfly Game Engine source code has been released. Finally, Microsoft DevLabs has released an experimental version of the .NET Framework called STM designed to make concurrency simpler.

From the C# Team

Eric Lippert

Kirill Osenkov

OfficeLabs, Educationlabs and Semblio

Charlie Calvert

Other Folks from Microsoft

Jason Zander

Mitsu

Scott Guthrie

Scott Hanselman

Miscellaneous Posts and Downloads

Downloads

Items of Interest

Community Convergence LIV

Charlie Calvert — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:55:44 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-fourth edition of Community Convergence. The number of posts from the C# team is a bit sparse right now since so many folks are heads down on C# 4.0. There was a little flurry of excitement among some of us on the team when Soma posted on new features in C# 4.0. We’ve received word of a free MSDN Event for WPF developers being held in Southern California. And of course, PDC will be held this year in Los Angeles on Nov 17-19.

Posts from the C# Team

Eric Lippert

Kirill Osenkov

Calling new on an interface

Ian Halliday

What’s wrong with this Code?

Other Teams

Joe Duffy

Scott Hanselman

Podcast: NServiceBus with Udi Dahan
Podcast: Optimizing Your Website with Jeff Atwood and Stackoverflow

Brad Abrams

Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 23: Azure

Community

Jon Skeet

Charles Petzold

Bojan Resnik

C# lambda and foreach variable

Community Convergence LIII

Charlie Calvert — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:15:22 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-third edition of Community Convergence. Here at Microsoft the C# team is still busy polishing C# 4.0 so that is shines and glistens. Below I provide some links to recent articles of interest by C# team developers, other Microsoft employees, and community members. Included is a fun video by Kirill Osenkov on his Live Geometry library, and a Jason Zander link to the new Windows XP to Windows 7 Reference application.

From the C# Team

Eric Lippert

Kirill Osenkov

Matt Warren

Building a LINQ IQueryable provider - Part XV (IQToolkit v0.15)

Charlie Calvert

Windows 7 Code Pack V. 1.0 Released

From other Microsoft Teams

Jason Zander

Announcing the XP2Win7 Reference Application

Vijay Upadya

Unit Testing Business Logic in .NET RIA Services

Scott Hanselman

Scott Guthrie

ASP.NET MVC V2 Preview 1 Released

Brad Abrams

Wriju Ghosh

C# 4.0 : Co-variance and Contra-variance

From the Community

Written by Various Authors

Abel Avram: SQLite Ported to .NET
Nate: Painless REST via ASP.NET MVC
Malcolm Sheridan: Two New Features of C# 4.0 You Will Love
Troy Goode: ASP.NET MVC Membership Kit
DotNetCube: Using the Adapter Pattern in C#

Community Convergence LII

Charlie Calvert — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:49:54 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-second release of Community Convergence. In this issue, I provide a series of links to C# team blog posts, and to other posts that might be of interest to C# developers.

Team Posts

Eric Lippert

Kirill Osenkov

Sree

Why Can’t Extension methods on Value Type be curried

Charlie Calvert

Community Convergence LI

Charlie Calvert — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:03:19 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-first edition of Community Convergence. In this post I’m simply going to highlight some of the great blogging activity produced by our team in recent weeks. Eric Lippert has been wonderfully productive. I’m beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t simply dedicate an entire section of the Internet to his work. I’ve also included a few pointers to the work of our friends in the F# world; both Luke and Luca played major roles in the C# world for many years, and it is fun to track what they are doing with F#.

Posts for the Team

Eric Lippert

Sam Ng

COM Interop in C# 4.0

CSharp FAQ

Kirill Osenkov

Luke Hoban

Luca Bolognese

Charlie Calvert

Community Convergence L

Charlie Calvert — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:32:49 GMT

Welcome to the 50th issue of Community Convergence. Now that Visual Studio 2010 Beta is out, I think it might be helpful to draw attention to the new dynamic programming and office development features from the C# team that appear in that release. The C# team defines the core syntax found in C# 4.0, and the IDE features that make it easy for developers to access those features. In this post, I’ll focus on language features, in upcoming post, I’ll focus on IDE features.

There are, of course, many new tools and APIs that will appear in Visual Studio 2010. In this post I’m focusing exclusively on core language features from the C# team itself, as opposed to features that come from the WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or other teams.

The text presented here is meant to provide a high level overview of these features. At the end of the article I will point you to more technical resources that will allow you to explore these features in more depth, and to read more precise, rigorous definitions of the new features in C# 4.0.

Language Features

Dynamic programming and enhanced interaction with Office are the main theme in C# 4.0. Dynamic programming is a means of writing code that does not rely on a static types linked at compile time. Traditionally C# has been a strongly typed language defined in large part by static types that must be declared explicitly at compile time. For instance, string, int, and object are all strongly typed static types that are resolved at compile time. A dynamic type is not linked at compile time, but is instead resolved at run time.

Why should C# developers care about dynamic programming? Isn’t the strongly typed nature of the C# language one of the language’s best features? The answer to this question is a resounding yes. Strong typing is one of the great advantages of the C# language, and the team expects most developers to continue to write strongly typed code nearly all the time. There is nothing in the new C# 4.0 features that prevents you from continuing to exclusively write strongly typed code, if that is what you prefer.

However, there are occasions when it is convenient to write dynamic code. For instance, languages such as Python and Ruby are dynamically typed. It is awkward, and sometimes nearly impossible, to call into these languages from a strongly typed language such as C# 3.5. The Office API is also difficult to call from C# 3.5; it has long been awkward for C# developers to call into Office using the current set of language features.

C# 4.0 is adding dynamic features so that it will be easier for developers to call into dynamic languages such as Python, and into more flexible APIs such as Office. You can think of the entire dynamic programming effort as a move by the C# team to fill in existing holes in the language. C# has always provided a great way to write strongly typed code, now we’re adding support for dynamic code, and for calling into Office applications.

The team has broken out the new features in C# 4.0 into four categories, all but the last of which are directly related to dynamic programming or Office development:

Dynamic Lookup
- A syntax for making calls into dynamic languages and APIs.
Named and Option Arguments
- Allows developers to easily call into and create methods that support optional parameters. This is a big aid to Office developers since the Office API’s make heavy use of optional parameters.
COM Interop
- Language features that make it easier to call COM objects. When calling COM objects you can now omit the keyword ref, you need to make fewer casts, and you no longer need depend on heavy-weight files called Primary Interop Assemblies, or PIAs.
Variance
- Covariance and contravariance have nothing to do with dynamic programming or Office development. Instead, they represent a small, very technical enhancement to the language that makes it easier to use inheritance when writing generic code. In general, this feature ensures that the language behaves as expected, rather than forcing you to rewrite code that looks like it should compile. For instance, the following code has a natural syntax that looks like it should work, but it does not work in C# 3.5. The upcoming changes in C# 4.0 ensure that it will compile:
  IEnumerable<string> strings = new List<string>();
  IEnumerable<object> objects = strings;

That’s the end of our quick overview of the new features in the C# 4.0 language. Again, remember that there are many other new features of in Visual Studio, and many new enhancements to existing technologies such as WPF, WCF, Silverlight and LINQ. In this post, I’ve focused exclusively on changes to the basic syntax of the language that have been implemented by the C# team itself.

References

Here are few references for people who want to explore this subject in more depth. A guide for developers interested in all things related to C# 4.0 is the C# Futures site on Code Gallery. There you will find a downloads page that contains the following key resources:

An excellent and definitive white paper on C# 4.0 language features. Mads Torgersen was the primary author of this document.
The C# 4.0 samples

Other important resources include C# 4.0 sections Eric Lippert’s and Sam Ng’s blogs:

Community Convergence XLIX (IL)

Charlie Calvert — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:44:57 GMT

Welcome to the 49th edition of Community Convergence. The big excitment of late has been the recent release of the Visual Studio 2010 Beta. If you have downloaded it yet, you should waste no time in heading over to the product page and downloading the files. As usual for betas of this type, I would recommend running it inside a Virtual Machine, or on a machine that you can afford to entirely reformat.

I’ve also included a number of links to articles from team members, many of whom discuss C# 4.0 programming issues that are related to the Visual Studio 2010 beta. There has been a lot of excellent blogging activity lately, so go ahead and get started digging into this great information.

Eric Lippert

Kirill Osenkov

Luca Bolognese

Sam Ng

Community Convergence XLVIII

Charlie Calvert — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:03:16 GMT

Welcome to the 48th Community Convergence. The C# team continues to work hard to get out the next version of C#, and to add improvements to the Visual Studio 2010 IDE. Working long, fruitful hours on these rainy Washington State January days and nights, the engineers on our team are doing a great job putting together a set of features that will improve both C#, and the experience C# developers have in the Visual Studio IDE. They are also working to lay the foundation for some big improvements which you will see only after the next version of C# ships.

To keep up with the team's plans, you should:

Continue to follow LINQ
Learn about the Dynamic Features planned for Visual Studio 2010
Learn about the Code Focused IDE features planned for Visual Studio 2010

Here are a few listings that will help you gain deeper insight into all of these important technology:

Videos

Sam Ng

Luca Bolognese

Expression Tree Serialization and LINQ

Eric Lippert

Eric has put together a short, but helpful description of how his fellow team members wrote about the C# Spec in the new book, The C# Programming Language Language, Third Edition. The authors are Anders Hejlsberg, Scott Wiltamuth, Peter Golde, and Mads Torgersen. Other notable luminaries contributed annotations to the printed version of this text. All the authors are very talented and work hard, but In my opinion, Mads deserves a special note of thanks for the great work he did to help pull this edition of the book together.

Kirill Osenkov

Soma

New Features in Visual Studio 2010

Matt Warren

LINQ IQ Toolkit on Codeplex

Community Convergence XLVII

Charlie Calvert — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:58:48 GMT

Welcome to the 47th Community Convergence. We had a very successful trip to PDC this year. In this post I’ll outline some of the highlights, and give you a chance to share in some of the excitement by linking to online versions of the talks from the C#, VB, IronRuby, IronPython and F# teams. Speakers at these talks include Anders Hejlsberg, Luca Bolognese, Paul Vick, Lucian Wischik, Dustin Campbell and Alex Turner. Several of these talks were among the top rated events at the conference, with Anders’ talk once again garnering the most attention and generating the most excitement.

Other highlights include a paper by Mads Torgersen that provides an overview of C# 4.0, samples demonstrating how to use the new C# 4.0 features, several posts by managed language team members on C# 4.0 features, and a set of interviews and pod casts related to our most recent plans.

Last week we also announced the release of the CTP for Visual Studio 2010. Be sure to download it if you want to try out the features discussed in the talks and posts that are highlighted in this article. You can go to the forums to leave comments on the CTP.

While you are thinking about the important new announcements for Visual Studio 2010, don’t forget to download the free CodeRush Xpress for Visual Studio 2008. That is something you can be using right now!

The Talks

Click the links to go to an online version of the VSL (managed language) team talks at PDC

TL16: The Future of C#
- Anders Hejlsberg
TL10: Deep Dive: Dynamic Languages in .NET
- Speaker: Jim Hugunin
TL11: An Introduction to Microsoft F#
- Speaker: Luca Bolognese
TL12: Future Directions for Microsoft Visual Basic
- Speaker: Paul Vick and Lucian Wischik
TL44 IronRuby: The Right Language for the Right Job
- Speaker: John Lam
TL46: Microsoft Visual C# IDE: Tips and Tricks
- Dustin Campbell
TL54: Natural Interop with Silverlight, Office and Python
- Alex Turner
TL57: A Panel on the Future of Programming Languages
- G. Bracha, D.Crockford, A. Hejlsberg, E. Meijer, W.Schulte, J. Siek

Samples and Overview of C# 4.0

I want to make sure that everyone can find the C# compiler team’s samples that demonstrated the key new features in C# 4.0. Accompanying the samples is a wonderful overview of C# 4.0, written by Mads Torgersen. Mads is a Senior PM on the VSL team; he sits on the C# design team with Anders, Matt, Eric and the others who help shape the language.

You can download the samples and Mads’ paper on the CSharp Future site:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/csharpfuture

This site will be the place where we roll out new samples and other documents related to the evolution of the C# language. Don’t forget to click the Downloads tab on the CSharp Future site to view the downloads.

Posts

Eric, Sam and Chris are developers who are implementing the dynamic feature in C# 4.0, so you don’t want to miss any of their posts on this subject. Along with Mads, Alex and Anders, they are folks who are defining the future of C#, so you should and listen to everything they have to say if you want to stay current with our plans for C#.

Sam Ng

Dynamic in C# Part One
Dynamic in C# Part Two

Chris Burrows

Eric Lippert

Charlie Calvert

Interviews

We did several podcasts and interviews during this event, and more are coming:

Inside C# 4.0 (Eric Lippert, Mads Torgersen, Sam Ng and Chris Burrows)
http://deepfriedbytes.com/up-and-coming/ (Soon to be released interviews with Rico Mariani, Chris Smith, Charlie Calvert and Bill Wagner.)
http://blogs.msdn.com/klevy/archive/tags/Windows+Live/default.aspx (Soon to be released interview with Charlie Calvert.)

Community Convergence XLVI

Charlie Calvert — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:40:48 GMT

Welcome to the forty-sixth Community Convergence. There are three upcoming events for members of the C# team. The most important, PDC, will be held in Los Angeles over the week of October 26. The weekend before the conference, there will be a Code Camp in Los Angeles. One week after the PDC, there will be a Tech Ed in Spain.

Code Camp in Los Angeles

Members of the team will be at the Code Camp in Los Angeles

Talk: Essence of LINQ
- Speaker: Charlie Calvert
- Room: GFS 116
- Time 9 AM
Talk: C# 3.0 features and how to (ab)use them
- Speaker: Sam Ng
- GFS 116
- Time: 10:15 AM
How LINQ Words
- Speaker: Alex Tuner
- Room: SLH 102
- Time: 12:30 PM

PDC

The following list includes talks by members of the C#, VB, F#, IronPython and IronRuby teams that will be given at PDC.

TL16: The Future of C#
- Anders Hejlsberg
- Mon 10/27 | 1:45 PM-3:00 PM | Petree Hall CD
- Repeated: Wed 10/29 | 3:00 PM-4:15 PM | 502A
TL10: Deep Dive: Dynamic Languages in .NET
- Speaker: Jim Hugunin
- Mon 10/27 | 3:30PM | 502A
TL11: An Introduction to Microsoft F#
- Speaker: Luca Bolognese
- Thu 10/30 | 1:45 PM-3:00 PM | 502A
TL12: Future Directions for Microsoft Visual Basic
- Speaker: Paul Vick
- Tue 10/28 | 5:15 PM-6:30 PM | 406A
TL46: Microsoft Visual C# IDE: Tips and Tricks
- Dustin Campbell
- Mon 10/27 | 12:45-13:30 | 403AB
TL54: Natural Interop with Silverlight, Office and Python
- Alex Turner
- Tue 10/28 | 12:45 PM-1:30 PM | 404A
TL57: A Panel on the Future of Programming Languages
- G. Bracha, D.Crockford, A. Hejlsberg, E. Meijer, W.Schulte, J. Siek
- Wed 10/29 | 10:30 AM-11:45 AM | 403AB
TL44 IronRuby: The Right Language for the Right Job
- Speaker: John Lam
- Mon 10/27, 5:15PM, 515B

Tech Ed Europe (EMEA)

Here are some talks by the C# and VB teams that will be given at Tech Ed EMEA.

How LINQ Works in C#
- Speaker: Alex Turner
New Features in C# 3.0
- Speaker: Mads Torgersen
Visual C# IDE Tips and Tricks
- Speaker: Karen Liu
The Future of C#
- Speaker: Mads Torgersen
The Joy of Writing Code in Visual Studio 2010
- Speaker: Karen Liu
Talk: Future Directions for Visual Basic
- Speaker: Jonathan Aneja
Talk: Strategies for Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 to .NET
- Speaker: Paul Yuknewicz, Jonathan Aneja
Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Tips and Tricks
- Speaker: Lisa Feigenbaum
How LINQ Works in VB
- Speaker: Jonathan Aneja
Conquering XML with Visual Basic 9.0
- Speaker: Lisa Feigenbaum

Community Convergence XLV

Charlie Calvert — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:22:16 GMT

Welcome to the 45th Community Convergence. I recently reached the two year mark here at Microsoft, and that means it is probably time for me to run some changes on my now familiar routines. In this post I'll begin that process by taking Community Convergence in a new direction.

In the past, this column has been used to report on the latest writings by members of the C# team and our immediate community. Overall, that has been a good strategy, but recent changes on the C# Dev Center have made me look for a new approach.

You may have noticed an increase in the feed aggregation technology being used on the Dev Center. As you probably know, an RSS feed contains a series of links to what are often disparate but related posts. Users can subscribe to a feed, and have the posts in the feed brought to their inbox, their browser, their desktop, their phone, their Zune, or some other location.

There are now several feeds on the Dev Center main page, two of which contain the kinds of posts that I have traditionally collected in Community Convergence:

The Featured Content feed is one that I manage directly, and as such it most directly takes the place of the old style Community Convergence posts. It contains content that I think is interesting, focusing primarily on material created by the C# team. You can subscribe to this feed by clicking here. The content in this feed is now also sent directly to the default C# Start Page in Visual Studio. (From the VS menu, choose View | Other Windows | Start Page.)
The section entitled C# Team and Community Blogs on the front page of the Dev Center is also a feed, but unfortunately you cannot subscribe directly to it at this time. Instead, you can read it on the front page of the Dev Center. This feed picks up on the tags from several blogs written both by C# team members and by prominent C# community members. When Matt Warren, Luca Bolognese, Eric Lippert, Jared Parsons or other teams members write a new blog post, it should show up in this list shortly after they publish. Several Microsoft MVPs, such as Bill Wagner and Mark Michaelis, can also mark posts to appear on this feed. We have recently added a few Developer Evangelists to this list as well.

A primary reason for adopting these feeds is to keep the content on the Dev Center fresh. We also want to allow you to subscribe to feeds so that the latest C# content can be delivered directly to your desktop.

There are other feeds on the Dev Center that you may have noticed. These include:

The Visual C# Code Gallery Samples: Code Gallery is a relatively new tool designed to replace the now defunct GotDotNet site. It allows team and community members to upload and download sample code and some related resources. You can find lots of interesting source code on this site, as well as other useful information such as white papers.
There is also a CodePlex feed on the front page of the Dev Center. It lists recent and popular projects hosted on the CodePlex site. On CodePlex you will find projects to which the community can contribute via check-in to an online source control tool, while Code Gallery is meant for projects that are developed by one person or group and simply posted for download. Both sites allow contributions from either Microsoft employees or community members, and both sites contain lots of source code. A number of significant projects, such as IronPython, are released via CodePlex, and using this feed to keep an eye on what is happening on that site is always a good idea.

Finally, the feed tool that I use to maintain the Featured Content list can also be used to create custom lists. I've taken advantage of that functionality and created a list that will contain only content posted by the CSharp team. This means that only posts by people who are or who have been members of the CSharp team can appear on this list. I created that list this morning, so it is still fairly short, but you can click here to get started using it. I try to post only technical content in the Featured Content list, but I will use this list to link to any content produced by team members, whether it is technical or not. For instance, I'll add this Community Convergence post to that feed.

I should thank Beth Massi, John Molloy, Amar Shah and Kerby Kuykendall who did so much to drive the adoption of feeds and new tools like Code Gallery on the Dev Center. We all worked together on these projects but Beth, John and Kerby were always on the front lines manning the barricades.

Well, I'm done. I've written my first "new style" Community Convergence post. The idea for this particular post was worked out by John Boylan and myself, who is my contact at MSDN. I wouldn't have written it, however, if I didn't have some ideas for future posts. So watch this space to see if can actually come up with some ideas to keep moving this column in a new direction.

Community Convergence XLIV

Charlie Calvert — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:32:08 GMT

Welcome to the forty-fourth Community Convergence. I want to remind every one that the C#, VB and dynamic language teams are still hiring. If you are an expert manager, developer or test engineer, please look at our listings and see if there is a place where you might belong. This is an excellent opportunity to participate in a first rate development process and to meet and work with some of the best developers in the world.

Tech Ed 2008 is fast approaching. This year it will be held in Orlando, Florida and divided into two sections. The Developer sessions will be held June 3-6, and the IT Professionals will gather June 10-13. Bill Gates will give the keynote at the developer conference, and there will be 16 tracks for you to explore. Several C# team members will be giving talks, as explained below.

I'm sure everyone knows that the betas for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET 3.5 SP1 have been released. Please download these bits and gives us feedback outlining how you think they look. Here are are posts by Brad Abrams and Scott Guthrie that can help get you up speed on these new bits, and here is the download for the betas.

Other news includes Keith Farmer's departure from Microsoft. Keith is a developer, but he has been a hard working and steady contributor to the community. He has been very active on the forums, in his blog, and across the net. We will miss him.

Finally, I'm going to try changing the format of Community Convergence for several reasons. First, the MSDN team has asked me to shorten these posts to fit in better with their new look and feel for the site. Secondly, we've had great success with our Visual C# Team and Community Blogs section, and feel that some of my listings are also appearing there. Thirdly, it is simply time for a change, and this will force me to try to become a bit more creative with my use of this space. As a result, I will try, as an experiment, moving the team links to a separate page, and use this space for important announcements, team gossip, and highlighting news.

See the most recent C# Team and Community Blog Links.

Tech Ed 2008 Talks by the C# Team

Meet the Microsoft Visual C# Team
- Speakers: Charlie Calvert, Mads Torgersen, Alex Turner, Karen Liu, Eric Maino, others....
- 6/5/2008 4:30PM-5:45PM (Blue Theater 2)
- Join members of the Visual C# team as we discuss Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and our plans for the next release of Visual Studio. This is a good opportunity to get to know team members, to ask questions, give suggestions, and ask for guidance. Come prepared to chat, to listen, to ask questions, and to laugh.
How LINQ Works: A Deep Dive into the Implementation of LINQ
- Speaker: Alex Turner
- Level: 400 - Expert
- Friday, June 6 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM, S320 A
- Want to know what really happens when you execute your favorite LINQ queries? Curious how the same query expression can target either in-memory data or relational data? In this 400-level talk, Alex Turner, the C# Compiler Program Manager, uses Reflector and other tools to reveal exactly how the compiler translates LINQ query expressions. Gain a deeper understanding of LINQ’s functional roots as we see how lambda expressions and iterator methods enable LINQ to Objects' elegant syntax. Then find out what's the same and what's radically different as we explore LINQ to SQL and the expression trees that make it tick.
Best Practices with the Microsoft Visual C# 3.0 Language Features (Repeats on 6/6)
- Speaker: Mads Torgersen
- Tuesday, June 3 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM, S320 E
- Friday, June 6 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM, S330 A
- Visual C# 3.0 introduces a number of new language features such as query expressions, lambda expressions, extension methods, automatically implemented properties, local type inference and more. These are all features that can really improve the quality of your code. They also give you new ways of doing things wrong. This talk focuses on both the good and the bad: how to use and how not to use the new features of C#. Each feature is introduced with a small example, and you should be able to follow the talk even if you are not already familiar with the new language constructs.
Microsoft Visual C# IDE Tips and Tricks
- Speaker: Karen Liu
- Thursday, June 5 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM, S220 E
- In this demo-focused session, we look at a number of ways to make you more productive in the Visual C# IDE as you move through the development lifecycle—whether you're trying to come up to speed with an unfamiliar code base, performing a refactoring to help keep your code clean, writing in new pieces of business logic, or debugging through a problem. These are the tips from the C# team itself—features from Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and out-of-box solutions that we use and love telling people about for making tasks easier.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 IDE Tips and Tricks (Repeats on 6/6)
- Speaker: Charlie Calvert (repeat by Sara Ford)
- Tuesday, 6/3/2008 10:30AM-11:45AM (S320 A) - Charlie
- Friday, June 6 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM, S230 C - Sara
- Harness the power of the 2008 IDE using new tips and tricks used by top Microsoft MVP developers and Microsoft employees. We look at new keyboard shortcuts, new options, the powerful "Quick Command" system, macros, tweaking IDE performance, and more that will make any developer using Visual Studio instantly more productive. The entire session is hands-on inside the IDE and applicable to any language, including Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual C++. If you've been using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or have never touched Visual Studio, you're guaranteed to walk away a VS power user.

Community Convergence XLIII

Charlie Calvert — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:57:00 GMT

Welcome to the forty-third issue of Community Convergence. The last few weeks have been consumed by the 2008 MVP Summit. During that annual event about 150 C# MVPs and many MVPs from other disciplines descend on Redmond for a technical summit accompanied by fun and games at local restaurants and hotels. Below I include a summary of the event by Jeremy D. Miller. One of the highlights of the event is a day in which the C# MVPs hear directly from the team about our plans for the future.

Other recent news includes the release of the Visual LINQ Query Builder, a tool for helping developers compose LINQ queries. Mitsu Furuta and others have been working hard on this project, and it is great to finally see it available for download. It is a useful programming tool for all LINQ developers, and especially for those who are new to LINQ and want some help learning the syntax.

From the C# Team

Luca Bolognese

Kirill Osenkov

Charlie Calvert

Charlie's Deck and Demos from his Essence of LINQ Talk

From the C# Community

MSDN Blog

Dustin Campbell

The Blue Badge Cometh

Jeremy D. Miller

Mitsu

Visual Linq query builder for Linq to Sql: VLinq

Scott Guthrie

Wriju

Daniel Fernandez

Live Mesh Launches

Charles Petzold

Rounded Graphics in WPF

From the F# Team

Luke Hoban

F# Session at TechEd Israel

Jomo Fisher

Correct by Construction in F#

Charlie Calvert's Community Blog : Community Convergence

Community Convergence LVII

From the C# Team

From others at Microsoft

Community Convergence LVI

From the C# Team

Beta 2

From the C# Community at Microsoft

My Picks for PDC 2009

The Coding4Fun Show: Advanced Rendering with Silverlight, Rick Barraza

From the Community

Community Convergence LV

From the C# Team

Other Folks from Microsoft

Miscellaneous Posts and Downloads

Community Convergence LIV

Posts from the C# Team

Other Teams

Community

Community Convergence LIII

From the C# Team

From other Microsoft Teams

ASP.NET MVC V2 Preview 1 Released

From the Community

Community Convergence LII

Team Posts

Other Posts of Interest

Community Convergence LI

Posts for the Team

Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 + TFS: The ServicePointManager

VS Project, C++ and Editor team blogs

Luke Hoban

Community Convergence L

Language Features

References

Community Convergence XLIX (IL)

Community Convergence XLVIII

Community Convergence XLVII

The Talks

Samples and Overview of C# 4.0

Posts

Interviews

Community Convergence XLVI

Code Camp in Los Angeles

PDC

Tech Ed Europe (EMEA)

Community Convergence XLV

Community Convergence XLIV

Tech Ed 2008 Talks by the C# Team

Community Convergence XLIII

From the C# Team

From the C# Community

From the F# Team