C# Explored with Anders Hejlsberg

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Computerworld interviewed Anders Hejlsberg who is the lead architect for the C# languages about C# and its future. 

In an interview in The A-Z of Programming Languages: C#, Anders describes the reasons for the development of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and C#. "There were several elements that we considered key design goals, like support for the next level up from object oriented programming, to component based programming where properties and metadata attributes were all first class in the language."

He comments on the popularity of C-style programming languages saying, "It was also very succinct: it was a very terse language, you can write very compact code which is something that programmers very much prefer."

On functional programming languages he says, "I definitely think that there is a space for functional programming today, and F# is unique in being the first industrial strength functional programming language with an industrial strength tooling language behind it, and an industrial strength platform underneath it."

He names three big trends for the future of C#:

  • Declarative programming languages
  • Dynamic programming
  • Concurrency

He mentions that the new features will be announced at Professional Developers Conference later in October.

For the entire interview, see The A-Z of Programming Languages: C#.