Did I mention msbuild? Microsoft is writing their own NANT. It's XML and everything.
Yesterday was a C# day for me.
I tried to get into Anders Hejlsberg's session on the new features in C#.
- Generics
- Iterators
- Anonymous methods
- Partial types
- Property accessors with different accessibility
But it was full. Even the TV outside the room had no space around it. They sometimes re-run popular sessions. Fingers Crossed.
I did however get into a good session called Visual C# "Whidbey" IDE enhancements for the C# developer
Found some things in there to look forward to.
Debugging is easier with regard to DataSets. In Whidbey you can adjust what you want to see in the debugger. You can tell VS what you consider your code and therefore want exposed in the debugger. You can also click on a drop down and see a DataSet Visualizer, which is essentially a list box of DataTables and a grid for the DataRows and DataColumns. It's like a trimmed down version of Barry's DataSet Debugger. In the build I saw, it’s not as good as Barry’s but maybe it will get better.
Here's one Andre will like. They have included IDE support for refactoring code.
Rename - You can rename a method and have it change solution wide.
Extract Method - If you wrote a large method and later decide it would be better split into multiple methods. You can highlight a section of code and select [extract method]. Whidbey will prompt you for a method name. It will figure out what arguments you need the scope and what it returns.
Some others include:
- Extract Interface
- Encapsulate Field
- Reorder parameters
- Remove Parameters
- Add Parameters
Expansions are cool too:
You know in VB .net how you type in a property and it fills in the get and set etc. VB had to do this because it's so verbose no one would use it otherwise. :)
Whidbey has something else cool called expansions (C# has it for sure. I have not confirmed VB). Using XML you can define an expansion, which shows up in IntelliSense. Lets say you wanted to create a property expansion. You could type in prop and it could fill in the following. the cursor would be placed on string ready for you to change. You can just tab through the fields (in yellow) to change the names.
private string name;
public string Name {
get { return name;}
set { name = value;} }
That's enough for now. I have to get to another session.