Community Convergence X

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Welcome to the tenth Community Convergence release. If you are reading this on the front page of the C# Developer Center you can enter comments in my blog.

Anders Hejlsberg and Karen Liu are featured at Tech Ed Europe this week. You can find the latest schedule for their talks on C# and LINQ in Raj Pai's latest post.

We are publishing a new draft specification from the IDE team on formatting code in Orcas. The specification is a team effort, but Karen is the primary author. This specification outlines the way code in the editor will be automatically formatted by actions such as pressing Ctrl+K, Ctrl+D. Preliminary formatting rules for many parts of the C# 3.0 and 3.5 language are included in this document. The preferred way to format Collection Initializers, Query Expressions, Lambda Expressions and other new language features are discussed. Please provide feedback!

Figure 1: Anson Horton discusses performance issues in Visual Studio.

There is new video (smaller, larger) featuring an interview with Anson Horton, a Program Manager on the C# team. Anson discusses Orcas performance issues and LAF (the Language Analysis Framework). Anson has been involved with the development of Visual Studio for several years, and has an in depth knowledge of performance issues inside the IDE.

What's Hot in the Microsoft C# World

  • The Windows SDK for Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0 Components is available as an ISO and as a web install. This release includes code for WPF (Avalon), WCF (Indigo), the Workflow Foundatin, and Cardspace. The Windows Vista Developer center also has tips about using this technology.
  • Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Microsoft Office 2007 is available as a free download.
  • I have a new post in my series on LINQ. This one focuses on query expressions, which are perhaps the primary building block most developers will use when working with LINQ.
  • Scott Guthrie has updated his post outlining his LINQ talks in Dallas.
  • Peter Ritchie left a comment calling attention to the usefulness of this Scott Guthrie post for those using VS 2005 who had trouble with templates and Web Application Projects.

Upcoming Events: Chat with the C# Team!

Mark your calendars! The C# team is planning several upcoming public chats.

  • November 14, 2006, 1 PM Pacific Time: C# Language Chat. Want to know more about anonymous delegates in C# 2.0, or our design rationale for them? Have some questions about our current thinking on C# 3.0 and LINQ? Perhaps you'd like to share your ideas with other C# users or the C# language team. Join the C# team for all that and more!
  • November 28, 2006, 1 PM Pacific Time: C# IDE Chat: Code snippets, enhanced intellisense, type colorization, refactoring, improved code navigation, metadata as source, Edit and Continue! There are so many great new C# IDE features in Visual Studio 2005 - there's a lot to talk about! Or perhaps you have a question about Visual Studio 2003 or what we're planning for the next version? It's your choice! Join the C# IDE team for a chat completely directed by your questions.
  • December 12, 2006, 1 PM Pacific Time: The LINQ Project is a codename for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. LINQ to SQL is a component of LINQ which allows access to data stored in relational databases. We’re actively designing and developing this technology - show up and join the LINQ to SQL team to participate in that process or just get a better understanding!

These Chats will frequently focus on LINQ. For more information, visit the LINQ web site or see this list of LINQ resources.

What's Hot Elsewhere

  • Link finder extraordinaire Jason Haley is taking a break. To keep us fed in the meantime, he provides references to other link bloggers.
  • The open source MSBuild tasks project is in full swing. Read this post about the amazing new tasks available to developers who use MSBuild. Included are an FTPUpLoad task, tasks for running NDoc and NUnit, tasks for zipping and unzipping files, and even a task for incrementing version numbers!
  • Charles Petzold has fun with XAML and provides two examples (one, two) that run smoothly in my version of IE 7. (I'm running Vista.)
  • Joel has a nice post on SQL Injection Bugs.
  • Adrian W Kingsley-Hughes, aka as the PC Doctor, has a fun post on keeping track of 1,000 RSS feeds. Tracking so many feeds definitely seems like aberrant behavior to me, but sometimes it's just plain fun to watch other people go too far.