Yesterday Dutch user group DotNed held a meeting to celebrate it's 3d year. The main presentation was by Dennis Vroegop. <Update Dennis is not Dennis. Sorry, sorry, sorry> He had visited the PDC, blogged about it and gave a presentation on the most impressive stuff he had seen. Also Dennis has a background in Turbo Pascal and Delphi, no wonder its was all about Anders's new creations C# 3.0 and LinQ
The audience was quite impressed
but also somewhat confused. For example, it does take some time to understand that this
var lijst = data.Where( s => s.Length > 3 );
is a valid C# statement. To understand what it means is the next step. The good thing about an user group meeting is the live discussion. Some of the first reactions were "I don't want/need that". Later on that changed to "I don't understand that". In the end "Perhaps it does make sense". Learning together, that's a community.
The main thing C# 3 does is generating code. Code which runs in the same CLR as C# 2.0. Behind the scenes the majority of the weird statements is translated into several lines of "regular" C# 2 code. When you're coding now your code most likely follows a pattern. You're repeating the same idea over and over again. Shorthand C# 3 (and (D)Linq) code generates code following a pattern. Now if you accept that pattern and believe it does things the right way you're set. Personally I don't believe the patterns I'm using are any better then those C# 3 is using. I am looking forward to start really using it.
The overall theme of the meeting was innovation. DotNed has been three years of innovation. Innovation means learning, learning and learning more; until you finally have to give up and retire. For the moment user groups keep me young, I'm not giving up yet. DotNed chairman Michiel van Otegem can look back on a good meeting.
My pension is expected in 17 years. Hope to celebrate it with 20 years of DotNed.
Query On !