Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Simon — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 20:18:00 GMT

Reason I asked is that I'm always on the lookout for material for our INETA community site (www.sadeveloper.net).

We chatted at PDC about it, but I've been so busy that I never got round to getting back to you to ask for anything specific ... :-|

Will send mail over weekend. Definitely!

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Keith Hill — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 08:48:00 GMT

How can C# better support creation of accurate minidumps for better post-mortem debugging? My initial thought on this was to allow developers to tie into the first pass exception handling stack walk via the addition of exception filters to the language. However, I'd be interested if there were other ways C# could address this.

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Paul Laudeman — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 14:29:00 GMT

+1 for Keith's question/suggestion.

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

BillSaysThis — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 15:32:00 GMT

Will the team develop a MySQL data provider as a best practices example? Please?

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

phil — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 19:21:00 GMT

I want to write *mostly* managed code now but find that in many cases its easier to whip up a COM object in C++ and the tlbimp or aximp the puppy than it is to slog through the manual divination of dllimport, structure definitions, enums, etc.

My apologies if this is already out there ...

Here's my question: Where can I find Microsoft approved p/Invoke DllImports declarations for the Windows, WinCE, Shell, OLE, Crypto, TAPI, MAPI, WinInet, all supported versions of Office applications, and, of course, VS.NET itself (for addins).

I would like these in C# as well as VB -- understanding that certain things can't be done in VB because of lack of unsafe/fixed support.

How many times have 3rd parties had to cobble bits of this stuff together? How many times has it been done internally at MSFT?

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Jason Goodwin — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 21:06:00 GMT

One thing I really wish I could do with attributes is more directly support functionality like that provided when using the security permission attributes for declarative representation of security checks.

I don't know what happens behind the scenes with those attributes, but it seems like the compiler emits special code due to the inclusion of the attribute that is ran at runtime.

XC# (http://www.resolvecorp.com/products.htm) provides an ICompilationAttribute to use with their add-in compiler to do code generation tricks with attributes, but I would hate to build tommorrow's legacy systems using an add-in that the company might not have a license for. However, I can really see this saving me enormous amounts of work with some items I'm doing right now, but I don't have the time to build similar technology and I hesitate to use it in something that will be in support for a time much longer than the licensing could last. (IIRC, their EULA allows them the right to revoke it whenever they want.)

Are there any plans to include a similar feature in C# and the other CLR languages?

One item I noted is that this tehcnology allows for something similar to AOP's static advice and introduce methods to be introduced. Has there been any talk about introducing AOP concepts into the language?

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Jason Goodwin — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 21:16:00 GMT

Second question more directly focused at C#.

There are two uses of the using statement that I know of.

One, is to allow references to classes inside a namespace to be made directly, or to setup an alias for a class.

The other allows for a shorthand expansion of try {} finally { resourse.Dispose(); }. I like this version because it increases code readability as long as the reader understands that using can be used in that way.

The problem is that because of the more prevalent first usage, the majority of developers I have worked with didn't know about the second. Why was the keyword used for both functions?

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

damien morton — Mon, 19 Jan 2004 03:48:00 GMT

This is a question, or rather a comment, about C# attributes. Ive come to like them very much, but its not possible to specify an attribute schema for classes. That is, Id like to specify that a class has an "attribute-class" which specifies which attributes it must, should, and/or may have. Has there been any thoughts about something like this?

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Paul Bartlett — Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:40:00 GMT

The attribute codegen sounds a bit like VC++ attributes, whose main use is in "supporting" ATL7 development. I'd certainly eb interested to know whether there is any planned convergence of the managed and unmanaged attributes.

And: could contexts help out with the "attribute-class" issue?

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Luc Cluitmans — Mon, 19 Jan 2004 19:29:00 GMT

In the C# 2.0 spec (section 20.7.1 of the Oct 2003 document), the rules for the 'new()' constraint are explained.
What is conspicuously lacking, IMHO, is a version of the 'new()' constraint that takes arguments, which would require the constrained type to have a constructor with that particular signature. The current construct only allows constraining to a type that has a no-arg constructor.
I think making this construct only available for classes that have a no-argument constructor is a severe limitation.
What is the reason for not extending this syntax - or is it an oversight?

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Daniel O'Connell — Mon, 19 Jan 2004 22:20:00 GMT

"This is a question, or rather a comment, about C# attributes. Ive come to like them very much, but its not possible to specify an attribute schema for classes. That is, Id like to specify that a class has an "attribute-class" which specifies which attributes it must, should, and/or may have. Has there been any thoughts about something like this? "

I too am curious about this, I have made several vauge propsals on microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp with such things, things like attributes, interface requirements(components sometimes require multiple interfaces, while this can be done by aggregating interfaces, its not as clean), few other bits as a single entity. I doubt there is any consideration or news on this, but I am curious anyway.

re: Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

Johann de Swardt — Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:24:00 GMT

Why can I serialize a DataTable using remoting but I get a Serialization exception when I try to serialize a datarow? Aren't datatables just collections of rows?

Putting it all in context

Paul's Imaginary Friend — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 15:54:00 GMT

Whither "Ask a Language Designer"?

sachin — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 07:37:00 GMT

How to customize PrintPreviewDialog in C# such that addition of a button, deliting existing control and changing functionality of existing control should be possible. Sample code will help me a lot
regards

MBA

MBA — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 18:53:00 GMT

Helpful For MBA Fans.