Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Julie Lerman — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 00:11:00 GMT

ooh - I have to add this part to my presentation:
For Each cust As Customer In myCustomers
Debug.Print(cust.CustomerName)
Next

God I have wanted to do that for years! <g>

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Darren Neimke — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 00:25:00 GMT

Aside from the new syntax but, that example doesn't really show me anything about super special Generics per se. For example, where you have:

Dim myCustomers _
As New Generic.List(Of Customer)

Change it to:

Dim myCustomers _
As New ArrayList

Compile it in 2003 and run it. Voila!

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Cory Smith — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 00:57:00 GMT

Darren, your missing the point of Generics. It's giving you strongly typed collections without having to write a ton of code. For example, create a new class and tell it to Inherit CollectionBase. Put your cursor on CollectionBase and go to the help for it. From there, to the overview for CollectionBase and scroll down to the sample it shows. Now, you have something to compare what Duncan is pointing out and what you have to do today to accomplish the same sort of thing.

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Darren Neimke — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 01:04:00 GMT

Cory, yes I'm aware of how cool Generics are and when you will use them. My point is that the only thing that reading Duncan's demo will give you is a glimpse of the new syntax.

So, I guess if Duncan is saying:

"Now, isn't that nice?" (that migrating code will be simple)

Then, I agree and I probably missed his point.

But, if he is saying:

"Now, isn't that nice?" (that this *new* stuff rocks based on what I've shown you in this sample)

Then, no... I don't think that this demo shows much.

I really only "piped-up" about it because I thought that I might have missed something important that was shown here.

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Ben Dover — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 02:14:00 GMT

Woo yay *walks off*

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Andres Morales — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 04:14:00 GMT

Hi, i change only two lines, but i don´t understand this line

C.CustomerID = i

is necesary?

Thanks

Visual Basic Generics

BufferOverrun — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 08:35:00 GMT

To Andres

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 06:20:00 GMT

It isn't necessary at all, I was just trying to actually do something with each item as I created them.... merely filler code.

RE: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Luciano Evaristo Guerche — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:16:00 GMT

I have seen C# generic samples and can quite understand it. In the VB sample presented what I think was missing was to mention the Generic.List declaration I guess might be:

namespace Generic
{
class List<T>
{
List(<T>) //constructor
{...}
}
}

And whose call in C# would be

List<Custumer> myCustomers = new List<Customer>

For me, what was to grab is that List<Custumer> myCustomers = new List<Customer> in C#, translates to Dim myCustomer As New Generic.List(Of Customer).

Am I right? Any comment welcome.

--
Luciano Evaristo Guerche
Jacarei, SP, Brazil
P.S.: I cannot believe that, I am able to write little C# snippets!

RE: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Luciano Evaristo Guerche — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:33:00 GMT

Duncan,

Is it possible to also create generic classes on VB.NET or just consume them? If your answer is that it is possible to create them, I wonder you would mind porting the article "An Introduction to C# Generics" found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/csharp_generics.asp to VB.NET.

I read it and feel it is a good example.

Regards,

Luciano Evaristo Guerche
Jacarei, SP, Brazil

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Jorriss Orroz — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 18:50:00 GMT

This is just cool. I already spend too much time creating typed custom collections. Generics should add another cool tool to add to the 'ol toolbox.

Thanks for the snipit Duncan.

VB Sample: Generics

Random Thoughts of Jorriss — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 21:53:00 GMT

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Hans Jergen Ohff — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 14:26:00 GMT

Yet another boring comment on Generics because nobody can think of anything original to talk about.

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Hans Jergen Ohff — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 14:26:00 GMT

Yet another boring comment on Generics because nobody can think of anything original to talk about.

Workaround: Arrays with non-zero lower bounds

Visual Basic Frequently Asked Questions — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 14:39:00 GMT

re: Just playing with Generics in Visual Basic Whidbey

Matt — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:32:00 GMT

The cool part that Darren wasn't seeing would be changing the for each loop as follows:

For i As Integer = 0 To myCustomer.Count - 1
' Notice the strong typing of the Item property
Debug.Print(myCustomers.Item(0).CustomerName)
Next