.NET User Group meeting 4 Jul 2007

What’s new in VB9

• Philip Cox
• Senior Developer
• Trade Me Ltd

http://www.ribboncustomizer.com/

• RCWOUG1
• 15% discount until 19 July

Brief history

• 1991 – Microsoft VB1 for Windows
• 1998 – VB6
  • Easy to learn and use
  • Quick to create Windows GUI applications
  • Get’s picked on by lower level languages
• 2002 – VB7
  • .Net 1.0
  • Garbage collection, structured error handling…
  • All the tools of the.net framework
  • Get’s picked on by C#
• 2003 – VB 7.1
• 2005 – VB 8
  • Edit and Continue
  • The My namespace
  • Generics
  • And more…

Implicitly Typed Local Variables

• E.g “Dim memberId = 31719”
• A switchable option

Object Initializers

• Set properties of an object at the time of instantiating the object
• Uses WITH

Collection Initializers

• Dim x = {2, 4 ,5, 7}

Extension Methods

• <Extension()> Function name(value as objectType) as outputType… End Function
• Extends the object type (e.g. string)

Lambda Expressions

• Not in Orcas Beta1 for VB
• Is there for C#
• Pointers to functions

Anonymous Methods (C#2.0)

• The old way of doing Lambda Expressions
• Take an object and return a function of that object
• E.g. CalcLength lengthFunction = t => t.Length;
• Console.WriteLine(“{0}”, lengthFunction(“Hi!”));

Anonymous Types

• Var anon = new { firstName=”Phil”, LastName=”Cox”};
• Dim anonymousType = New With (.FirstName=”Phil”, .LastName=”Cox”}

Deep XML Support

• (C# does have)
• Dim xml = _
  • <?xml versoin =”1.0”?>
  • <CoolNewFeatures name=”Nullabletype”>
  • …
• Not in Orcas Beta1

LINQ (Language Integrated Query)

• LINQ To Objects
• LINQ Enabled ADO.net
  • LINQ To datasets
  • LINQ To SQL
  • LINQ To entities
• LINQ to XML
  • FROM first (for IntelliSense)
  • WHERE <% entity.attribute %>
  • SELECT <xml>
• LINQ to Objects too

Nullable Types

• Not in Orcas Beta1 for VB
• Int? nullableInt;
• If(nullableInt == null) {}
• Int I =

Relaxed Delegates

• (only in VB)
• AddHandler button1.Click, AddressOf clickEvent
• Private Sub ClickEvent() ‘No need to specify arguments

Partial Methods

• Not in Orcas Beta1 for VB
• Can redefine methods in same class
• Must be sub (or void) because sometimes it will return a value and other times it won’t
• Can only be one stub and one implementation
• If more than one implementation, compile error

Automatic Properties

• Not in VB at all
• Public class Person {
• Public string FirstName {get; set;}
• Public string LastName { get; set; }
• Public int Age (get; set; }
• }

And more!

• Turnery “If”
• Coalesce operator
• Improved IntelliSense
• “My” extensions
• And more…

What’s new in C# 3.0

• Kirk Jackson
• Senior Developer
• Xero

Agenda

• A brief history
• What’s new
• Questions

Brief history

• Pre 2000 – Other programming languages ruled the world
• June 2000 – C# Announced at PDC
  • Beta version released
  • No comparisons to Java are made
  • ECMA Standardisation
• 2001 – Mono C#
• 2002 – Wellington .NET User Group
• 2003 – VS .NET 2003
• 2005 – VS .Net 2005
• 2006 - .NET Framework 3.0
• 2008 – C#3.0

Questions

• Is it time to switch back to VB? That XML stuff looks pretty good.
• Personally can’t see any difference/reason to change
• Do C# developers get paid more?
  • There is prejudice against VB
  • However, there is a shortage of VB
  • Perhaps C# developers come from a Comp Sci (academic) background
  • Perhaps VB developers come from a Comm (business) background
  • Perhaps managers get paid more?