Derik Whittaker

Thoughts on Software Development, .Net, OOP, Design Patterns and all things cool

IOC(SM):MOC(RM):TDD(NU):SCC(Svn):ORM(L2S):XPP(-):XPP(+):DDD(T+)

Deeper in .Net Live -- Linq internals with VB 9 (oh yea, VB baby)

Author: Scott Wisniewski

The first presentation of the day is 'Linq internals with VB 9'. The presenter is a Microsofty that made the trek out from Redmond to visit the midwest. The goal of the presentation is to give a high level overview of Linq, and it was pulled of pretty well.

Here are some of the topics that were covered

Showed the 'painful' way of doing data retrieval in .Net 2.0. Then moved on to show how to accomplish the same task via Linq.
Demo'ed how you could override Linq keywords such as Where if you wanted to override the default behavior (hey, I am sure someone will want this).
Demo'ed XLinq, this is pretty cool. Sadly the IDE support is ONLY for VB (damn vb guys). Us C# devs can still use XLinq, but only via the API, we will get no intellisense. Here are 2 postings about XLinq Steve Eichert and DonXML. Actually had a VB developer say to me 'Finally something us VB guys have that you C# do not, we are now a first class citizen' -- Laughed

Ok, this is just my little rant on my VB syntax hates

Using the _ as line separators
Lack of needing () for methods (confusing anyone)
Extension methods are ODD
Non-case sensitive
Lambda syntax is 'ugly'
Function (c) c.SomeProperty = "SomeValue"

Nice overall theme, but would have liked to see more time spent on Linq it self. There was a large percentage of time spent 'building' the test application.

Till next time,

Published Apr 05 2008, 09:10 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Conference

Comments

Don Demsak said:

From someone that just did a whole day presentation on LINQ, let me tell you, it is hard to cover the language syntax and a query provider (other than LINQ to Objects) in an hour (or even in an hour and a half). I spent 8 hours teaching an intro to LINQ pre con workshop, and we barely scratched the surface.

I spent 2 hours just on the languge improvements and the basic extension methods/clauses that make LINQ possible, and I could have spent another 2 hours in demos.

My favorite topic, though, is writing your own query providers. Well that an how cool LINQ to XML is, especially for the VB guys (and I use to consider myself more of a C# guy). If you are going to use LINQ to XML, just use VB 9, it is just plan better than using the pure API (and believe me, I was an anti XML Literals and XML Properties guy, but I've grown to love them).

# April 5, 2008 12:20 PM

Derik Whittaker said:

Wow, yesterday was great. Myself and Jordan Martz make the trek up from Chicago land up to Brookfield

# April 6, 2008 11:20 AM

Name (required)

Your URL (optional)

Comments (required)

Remember Me?

Enter the numbers above:

Add

About Derik Whittaker

Derik is a .Net Developer/Architect specializing in WinForms working out the northern suburbs of Chicago. He is also believer and advocate for Agile development including SCRUM, TDD, CI, etc.

When Derik is not writing code he can be found spending time with his wife and young son, climbing on his bouldering wall, watching sports (mostly baseball), and generally vegging out.