Community Convergence
This is the first in a series of blogs called Community Convergence that will appear both on the front page of the C# DevCenter, and also on my msdn blog site. Once the system is in place, the posts should appear in both places at approximately the same time. The first time out, however, it will be visible on my blog for awhile before it appears on the DevCenter.
This blog features the latest news about C# directly from the program managers, developers, and QA engineers who are creating the product. I will be updating this blog regularly, and will link from here to articles by the Microsoft C# team, and others in the C# community.
The first thing to learn about our updated site is that you can reach it by typing csharp.net in your browser address field and pressing enter. Once you’ve arrived on our home page, you can find news about the C# community, and information designed to help you create the best, and most up to date, C# programs.
My commitment to you is that I will keep this site fresh with the latest news and the best technical articles available. When looking for content, I will tap both the program managers who drive C#, and the developers and QA engineers who create it. When possible, I will have them personally write articles or record media files, but when necessary I will gather the news from them, and pass it on to you here.
Of course this site will only be as good as the community itself. We want to feature articles and code by community members, and I want to hear from you when you have ideas or thoughts that you want to share. Tell us what you like, what you don’t like, and what you want to see on the site itself.
I should probably close this section by introducing myself. My name is Charlie Calvert, and I’m the Community Program Manager for C#. My primary goal is to serve your needs by facilitating the creation of a vibrant and useful C# community. That means that I am here to help you get the information you need, and to help the C# team communicate with you as easily as possible. I have no other purpose. That means I will never be too busy to keep this page up to date, or too distracted to listen to your issues. I’m focused on this site, and on opening up other channels for communicating with the C# Community.
What’s Hot in CSharp
Here are a few recent C# articles, videos and blogs:
Luca has a great new video on the May CTP.
Anson has the scoop on item template customization.
Karen has great information on C# key bindings.
I have a blog on using generics, on implementing Scrum, and one on the 2006 Agile Conference.
Here’s a tutorial on creating a data access layer.
Our own Eric Lippert has a great article on LINQ and lambda expressions.
Think you know everything there is to know about the old divide by zero error? Test yourself by checking out this blog.
Here are some links on more general programming issues from the broader Microsoft community:
· Think it’s not possible to write real time programs using C#? Take a look at this article on how to leverage the CLR when writing games or other real time programs.
· Developers who care about shared source will want to check out the Channel 9 article on CodePlex.
· These days, it’s all about robots. Download the latest C# Robot code here.
Finally, let’s mention a few downloads that might appeal to programmers or bloggers.
- Be sure to check out the May Community Tech Preview for LINQ. LINQ is a codename for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that includes native language syntax for queries.
- If you are still using Visual Studio 2003, don’t forget to get Service Pack 1, which contains updated code.
- The Developer Tools area has posted a new tool for stress testing your applications. Check it out.
- Are you using Windows Live Writer to create your blogs? Should you be? Check out the beta and decide for yourself.
That's all for this post. Please remember to contact me if you have article ideas or information you want to share.