InfoQ Homepage C# Content on InfoQ
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C# 9 Proposals: Module Initializers
The module initializer proposal has been promoted to C# 9 candidacy. This would act like a static constructor in C#, but rather than applying to one class it applies to the entire assembly.
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Stateful Programming Models in Serverless Functions: Chris Gillum at QCon San Francisco
Chris Gillum, principal engineering manager at Microsoft, presented at QCon San Francisco on Serverless Programming Models in Azure Functions. In his presentation, he discussed two stateful programming models, workflow and actors on Azure Functions - Microsoft’s implementation of serverless compute.
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A Proposal for IDisposable and Static Analysis: DisposeUnused Attribute
When .NET was first created, there was uncertainty about how IDisposable should be used. As a result, IDisposable was applied in an overly aggressive fashion with many categories of classes requiring empty Dispose methods. This has led to problems with static analysis tools that cannot separate real cases of missing Dispose calls from false positives.
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Microsoft Releases C# 8.0
Last week Microsoft announced the official availability of C# 8.0 as part of the .NET Core 3.0 release, simultaneously at .NET Conf 2019 and on their development blog. The new language features include nullable reference types, asynchronous streams, default interface members, and new code patterns. All new features are supported in Visual Studio 2019.
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Preview of C# 8.x
Even though C# 8.0 is still months away, planning has begun for C# 8.x. Some of these features are new, while others were previously considered for C# 8.
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C# 8 Nullable Reference Types Update
Work continues on nullable refence types for C# 8, revealing edge cases that need to be addressed before the final release and new opportunities for reducing the amount of boilerplate developers have to write.
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C# 8 Pattern Matching Enhancements
C# 7 laid the groundwork for pattern matching, but a lot of features had to be left on the cutting room floor. With the extra time C# 8 needs, many of these are being picked up.
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C# 8 Nullable Value Type Enhancements
First introduced in .NET 2, very little has changed for Nullable<T> over the last decade and a half, but that looks like it is about to change. Much of the work going into supporting nullable reference types in C# 8 may be applied to nullable value types.
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C# Default Interface Methods Update
As support for Default Interface Methods gets closer to completion, potential issues are raised. While much has been accomplished, this is a complex feature and many of the specifics haven’t been settled yet.
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C# 8 More Small Features
Though C# 8 is supposed to be released this year and the roadmap for C# 8.x and 9 are beginning to be formed, Microsoft is continuing to approve features for the next release.
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Microsoft Releases High-Performance C# and F# Support for Apache Spark
Microsoft announced the release of .NET for Apache Spark, adding new high-performance C# and F# binding to the big-data computation engine.
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C# Futures: Deferred Error Handling
When writing robust software, there is often a need to perform a series of retriable operations. In order to make the system robust, each operation in the series can be coded so it is independent of the status of the previous operation. Before the deferred error handling proposal, this could be tedious to code.
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C# Futures: Pointer Math
Interoperability with native platforms often require very specific coding patterns that involve the manipulation of pointers. While this can be done via a shim written in C, the proposal titled Operators should be exposed for System.IntPtr and System.UIntPtr seeks to offer that ability directly in C#.
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C# Futures: Static Delegates and Function Pointers
With each release of C#, it gains more low-level capabilities. While not useful to most business application developers, these features allow for high performance code suitable for graphics processing, machine learning, and mathematical packages. In these next two proposals, we see new ways to reference and invoke functions.
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C# Futures: Lambda Attributes
Attributes are a key part of .NET’s metadata processing capabilities. They are used by compilers, static analyzers, and runtime libraries for a variety of purposes. While normal functions/methods can have attributes, prior to this proposal lambdas and anonymous functions could not.