C# Future...Is There One?

Posted on November 19, 2008

After watching the C# Futures presentation by Anders at the 2008 PDC I got REALLY excited about what's in the future for C#. The dynamic keyword? Wicked cool. But I got to thinkin about all that really cool stuff.

How many "regular joes" actually use all the new cool stuff that C# packs? How 'bout LINQ? When looking at sorting a collection of objects does the "regular joe" automatically pick LINQ to do the heavy lifting or does he or she hit google to ask how to sort a collection of objects by one or more properties?

I'm a geek. Seeing the dynamic keyword and watching the video makes me salivate and wish that this stuff was shipping by Christmas(2008). I know it's not, but it's amazing stuff - IF you're into that kind of stuff. I am into that stuff but I think I'm in the minority.

My canundrum of the day. Is using advanced software/language constructs that ultimately make software better by making the framework do more, hurting our industry because it's harder to maintain by the "regular joe" or is it helping our industry?

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G. Hussain Chinoy

It's hurting the industry - this is one reason why it's difficult for Microsoft, too: they want to throw in all the neatness that smaller languages (py, rb, erl, etc.) have, but have such a large following the neatness turns into noise and then into frustration (think the "disappearance" of LINQ to SQL). Who knows what's "really" used by regular joe programmers? They use a collection of accreted "tips & tricks" they've learned over time, because there are so damn many language convention that look like snowboard tricks they're never going to use and then the level of "beginners" swells, consistency fragments even more, and code suffers.

What's on your list of new things to learn for .NET? WCF, WF, WPF, EF? Open source libraries? Those aren't even "what's new."

chris carter's web log

C# Future...Is There One?

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