Channel 9 - Entries tagged with C#

Bytes by MSDN: Anders Hejlsberg and Tim Huckaby discuss the Future of C#

Bytes by MSDN — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:51:49 GMT

Join Tim Huckaby, Founder of InterKnowlogy & Actus Software, and Anders Hejlsberg, Technical Fellow at Microsoft - at Build 2011 - as they discuss the future of C# and the latest projects Anders is involved in. Anders, the "Father" of C#, discusses the exaggerated rumors swirling around prior to Build 2011 about losing the ability to use C# and VB.NET in building new metro apps. He speaks to the fact that C# and VB are first class citizens in the Windows 8 universe along with C++ and Java Script. Tim & Anders also discuss the Async feature and how this form of programming is becoming increasingly important when building responsive apps. You'll also hear about the Roselyn Project that Anders is currently working on. Great interview not to miss!

About Anders

Anders Hejlsberg is a Technical Fellow in the Developer Division. He is an influential creator of development tools and programming languages. He is the chief designer of the C# programming language and a key participant in the development of the Microsoft .NET framework. Since its initial release in 2000, the C# programming language has been widely adopted and is now standardized by ECMA and ISO. Before his work on C# and the .NET framework, Hejlsberg was an architect for Visual J++ development and the Windows Foundation classes.

Before joining Microsoft in 1996, Hejlsberg was one of the first employees of Borland International Inc. As principal engineer, he was the original author of Turbo Pascal, a revolutionary integrated development environment, and chief architect of its successor, Delphi.

Hejlsberg co-authored "The C# Programming Language", published by Addison Wesley, and has received numerous software patents. In 2001, he was the recipient of the prestigious Dr. Dobbs Excellence in Programming Award.

He studied engineering at the Technical University of Denmark.

About Tim

Tim Huckaby is focused on the Natural User Interface (NUI)- Touch, Gesture, and Neural, in Rich Client Technologies on a broad spectrum of devices

Tim has been called a "Pioneer of the Smart Client Revolution" by the press. Tim has been awarded many times for the highest rated technical presentations and keynotes for Microsoft and many other technology conferences around the world. Tim has been on stage with, and done numerous keynote demos for many Microsoft executives including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Tim founded InterKnowlogy, a custom application development company, in 1999 and Actus Interactive Software in 2011 and has over 30 years of experience including serving on a Microsoft product team as a development lead on an architecture team on a Server Product. Tim is a Microsoft Regional Director, a Microsoft MVP and serves on many Microsoft councils and boards like the Microsoft .NET Partner Advisory Council.

Anders Hejlsberg and Tim Huckaby recommend you check out

Brian Beckman: Hidden Markov Models, Viterbi Algorithm, LINQ, Rx and Higgs Boson

Charles — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:00:00 GMT

It's been WAY too long since we've had Brian Beckman sharing knowledge, insights and perspectives on Channel 9. This changes now!

Needless to say, I was incredibly happy to spend an hour with Brian learning all about what he's up to these days. Not surprisingly, he's writing code and employing Rx and monads to solve very interesting problems. In this conversation (a code lesson, algorithm survey, a splash of random topical diversion), Brian explains and demonstrates his latest endeavor: implementing the Viterbi algorithm in C#. What's the Viterbi algorithm, Brian? What are hidden Markov models? What are you using this stuff for? Where does Rx fit into this? What's going on? By the way, it's awesome to learn that a Niner has been sharing C# monadic implementations with Brian (state monad, maybe monad).

Of course, no conversation with Brian - a physicist by training and a software architect at Microsoft - is complete without talking about some current physics problem: Finding the elusive Higgs Boson is all the rage these days, so we talk about what it means.

Brian also shares insights on Haskell, functional and hybrid programming languages (C# is imperative, but it provides functional capabilities like LINQ, for example, upon which Rx is built (Rx is LINQ-to-Streams or observable sequences of events, really)...). We also finally discuss his previous work at MS that we never got a chance to talk to him about while he was doing it. Before joining the Bing Mobile team, Brian was working on a project to create a new functional programming language. What was it?

Thank you, Brian!

Happy holidays from Channel 9 wherever you are and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating!

Notes and More:

The code Brian demos (download it, unzip it, launch VS, open the solution, then watch this video and play along): https://github.com/rebcabin/DotNetExtensionsImproved

From Wikipedia - information on Markov and Viterbi:

A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobserved (hidden) states

The Viterbi algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm for finding the most likely sequence of hidden states – called the Viterbi path – that results in a sequence of observed events, especially in the context of Markov information sources, and more generally, hidden Markov models.

YOW! 2011: Joe Albahari - LINQ, LINQPad, and .NET Async (and a little Rx, too)

Charles — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:47:53 GMT

Joe Albahari is the creator of LINQPad, an application that many of you use in your daily development of .NET applications/services, especially those that employ LINQ in some fashion. It's just a fantastic developer tool for C#; one that C9 celebrity genius and avid LINQPad user Brian Beckman calls "the app I wish I wrote". Erik Meijer, the creator of LINQ, uses LINQPad daily. If you haven't played around with LINQPad, then you need to! [End advertisement for LINQPad Hey, great work deserves praise, don't you think?]

Joe's also the author of a few C# books (targeting both pro developers and novices) and two books covering WPF. Joe lives in Perth, Australia and works for himself (right on!). Great to meet you, Joe.

Thanks again for creating and continuing to evolve LINQPad, Joe!!

Joe's YOW! speaker page

The YOW! Developer Conference offers outstanding opportunities to learn more about the latest practices, technologies, and methodologies for building innovative software solutions as well as the chance to meet and network with international software experts and other talented developers in Australia. Thanks to Dave Thomas and the event's excellent staff - Mary Catherine (MC), Lisa, Aino, Melissa, and others - for inviting me to this excellent pure developer event and thanks to all of the speakers for letting me take some of their time to record conversations for Channel 9. If you live in Australia, or aren't too far away, or just like to travel (who doesn't?), then you need to go to this yearly event. It's outstanding. There are many great developers down under. That's for sure. The speakers are exceptional—Dave and team set a high bar!

Understanding Event Driven Programming - 23

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:22:25 GMT

In this lesson we demonstrate how events are utilized in the .NET Framework Class Library specific to WPF and ASP.NET Web Forms applications. In these examples, we see how C# is generated by the IDE to "wire up" a user action or application event to the code that handles that event. The point is that there's a pattern to how .NET works with events and how events drive most Graphical User Interface based applications.

Filtering and Managing Data Collections using LINQ - 22

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:22:01 GMT

Building on the work from the previous lesson on generic collections, in this lesson we discuss how Structured Query Language provides a means of working with sets (collections, groupings, etc.) of data. Similarly, the LINQ syntax provides a simple way of working with groups of data in generic collections. We demonstrate projecting data onto existing types as well as new anonymous types.

Download the source code for Filtering and Managing Data...

Working with Collections - 21

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:21:32 GMT

Collections are a more powerful form of arrays. In this lesson we demonstrate an "old style" collection (pointing out its limitations) as well as several of the newer, strongly typed generic collections (List and Dictionary) utilizing the generics syntax.

Download the source code for Working with Collections

Gracefully Handling Exceptions - 20

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:21:03 GMT

Exceptions occur when an application experiences some unexpected problem at run time. This lesson discusses how to use the try catch finally block to anticipate potential problems and attempt to shield the end user from those problems as much as possible. We discuss best practices when checking for exceptions and discuss the mindset of the conscientious software developer who seeks to provide the best possible experience for his users.

Download the source code for Gracefully Handling Exceptions

Enumerations and the switch Decision Statement - 19

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:20:41 GMT

Classes can contain many different types of information, not just Properties and Methods. In this lesson we demonstrate the use of Enumerations because in the .NET Framework Class Library, properties can often be set only to a predetermined subset of possible values. To illustrate this point we create our own custom enumeration, then utilize it in a simple application that demonstrates a third Decision statement, the switch. We then demonstrate some Visual Studio IDE magic that automatically implements code blocks for all possible enumeration values.

Enumerations and the switch Decision Statement

Understanding Scope and Utilizing Accessibility Modifiers - 18

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:20:15 GMT

This lesson begins by discussing the scope of variables within code blocks, and progresses to explain how accessibility modifiers such as Public, Private, and Protected are used by the .NET Framework Class Library to expose or hide implementation of their given services to consumers of that given class. This is sometimes referred to as "encapsulation."

Download the source code for Understanding Scope...

Understanding Namespaces and Adding References to Assemblies - 17

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:19:49 GMT

We've avoided any talk about Namespaces; however, they serve an important role in the .NET Framework Class Library as well as in our custom class libraries. In this lesson we explain how Namespaces allow us to disambiguate classes that may share the same name. Additionally, we explain how the .NET Framework Class Library is so large that including all its classes in every application you write is a waste of system resources. To mitigate that issue, the FCL is split into multiple assemblies (.dll files) that your project must include (or rather, reference) in order for them to be utilized in your applications. We discuss how certain project templates include references to the typical assemblies required by a given type of application (such as a web application), and we demonstrate this by referencing a custom assembly of my own design.

Download the source code for Understanding Namespaces...

Working with Classes and Inheritances in the .NET Framework Class Library - 16

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:18:26 GMT

We've been looking at working with classes in the two previous lessons. The hope is that by better understanding how classes work, you'll gain an appreciation for how classes are utilized in the .NET Framework Class Library (FCL). In the FCL, child classes often inherit basic functionality from their parent classes. In fact, all classes ultimately inherit from a single base class, System.Object. This lesson continues to teach concepts about classes (specifically, in this case, inheritance) by showing you how to utilize inheritance in your own custom classes. You'll learn about overriding virtual functionality, abstract base classes, sealed classes, and more.

Download the source code for Working with Classes...

More about Classes and Methods - 15

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:17:42 GMT

This lesson digs into more details about Classes—what exactly happens when you create a new instance of a class? What exactly is a reference to an instance of a class? How does passing the reference to a method affect a class? We also review overloaded methods, talk about static versus instance methods, constructors, and more.

Download the source code for More about Classes and Methods

Understanding and Creating Classes - 14

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:17:11 GMT

Now that you have a good sampling of basic C# syntax under your belt, it's time to tackle some more challenging topics. Classes are integral to the .NET Framework, particularly the .NET Framework Class Library. This lesson demonstrates how classes are defined and new instances are created, how to define Properties (using the prop "code snippet" to create auto implemented properties), and how to both set values and get values for a given instance of the class as well as creating Methods in our classes. We talk about how the classes you create are really custom dat types that can be used as such in helper method declarations and more.

Download the source for Understanding and Creating Classes

Working with DateTime - 13

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:16:46 GMT

Like strings, dates and times are represented using special types, and so deserve some attention. In this lesson we learn how to work with Date and Time data, how to create new instances of DateTime, how to add time; format the data for display, and more. Furthermore, we discuss the TimeSpan class as a means of representing duration of time.

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Working with Strings - 12

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:14:44 GMT

Like strings, dates and times are represented using special types, and so deserve some attention. In this lesson we learn how to work with Date and Time data, how to create new instances of DateTime, how to add time, format the data for display, and more. Furthermore, we discuss the TimeSpan class as a means of representing a duration of time.

Download the source code for Working with Strings

while Iterations and Reading Data from a Text File - 11

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:14:05 GMT

In this lesson we learn a new type of iteration statement (while) as well as how to utilize the StreamReader class to stream data from a file to the Console window. Additionally, we learn how to add new files to our project, how to set properties of our file using the Properties window, how to add a using statement as a means of resolving a class name referenced in our code to the namespace in which it is defined, and more.

Download the source code for while Iterations and Reading Data...

Creating and Calling Simple Overloaded Helper Methods - 10

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:13:40 GMT

In this video we begin wading into the topic of methods by creating a helper method to break out code we may need to use in multiple places within our code. We create and call our methods to retrieve a value, create and use input parameters, learn about string formatting, and create overloaded versions of our method

Download the source code for Creating and Calling Simple...

Creating Arrays of Values - 09

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:13:10 GMT

In this lesson we talk about arrays, which are multi-part variables—a "bucket" containing other "buckets," if you will. We demonstrate how to declare and utilize arrays, including setting and retrieving their values, initializing their values, attempting to access values outside of the boundaries of the array, and iterating through arrays using the foreach statement. Finally, we demonstrate a couple of powerful built-in methods that give arrays added features.

Download the source code for Creating Arrays of Values

for Iterations - 08

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:13:02 GMT

Iterations allow our applications to loop through a block of code until a condition is satisfied. We'll cover several different types of iteration statements throughout this series, starting with the for iteration statement. This lesson demonstrates how to utilize "code snippets" to help remind you of the syntax for this complex statement, and shows debugging in action via the values of loops displayed in the Visual Studio IDE.

Download the source code for Iterations

Operators, Expressions and Statements Duration - 07

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:12:36 GMT

In this lesson, we discuss how to create a properly formed C# statement. As with any language, there's a "right way" and a "wrong way" to write "complete thoughts" in C#. We discuss how statements are made up of expressions, and how expressions are made up of operators (think: verbs) and operands (think: nouns). Finally, we talk about compilation errors that occur when the syntax rules of C# are ignored.

Download the source code for Operators, Expressions and Statements Duration

Branching with the if Decision Statement and the Conditional Operator - 06

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:12:23 GMT

Branching allows us to add logic to our applications. In this lesson introduces the if Decision statement (in its various forms) as well as the conditional operator. We also discuss how to refactor our code to make it more compact and less likely to produce errors by eliminating duplicate code.

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Declaring Variables and Assigning Values Duration - 05

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:11:34 GMT

In this lesson we start adding C# syntax to your vocabulary by talking about one of the fundamental building blocks: data types and variables. As well as basic topics such as naming conventions, data type conversions are discussed.

Download the source code for Declaring Variables and Assigning Values Duration

Quick Overview of the Visual C# Express Edition IDE - 04

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:11:18 GMT

This lesson demonstrates some common Visual Studio IDE features, various windows, debugging features, code window features, customizations, and more found in Visual C# Express Edition. A more complete discussion of features is found in the Visual C# Express Edition Fundamentals series and the Visual Studio Fundamentals series, both of which are available on Channel9.

Dissecting the First C# Program You Created - 03

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:10:56 GMT

This lesson picks up from the previous one by discussing at length each completed action and written line of code. It discusses the relationship between the C# code, the C# compiler, the .NET Framework, and more. The lesson discusses the concept of code blocks at a high level explaining how methods, classes, and namespaces are related. Finally, the lesson shows you where your project files are stored and the location of code compiled by the Visual Studio IDE as well as the different types of compilation (i.e., debug compilation versus release compilation).

Creating Your First C# Program - 02

Clint Rutkas, Bob Tabor, Golnaz — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:08:47 GMT

This lesson teaches you how to create a simple application—first using Windows Notepad and the C# Command Line Compiler, and then by using Visual Studio or Visual C# Express Edition. The point of this episode is to demonstrate how utilizing an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is far easier than attempting to work using a loose collection of windows and tools. The video concludes with an explanation of common solutions to the many different problems you might encounter as you first begin writing and compiling code.

Download the source code for Creating Your First C# Program