1. How to be a C# ninja in 10 easy steps. Benjamin Day

2. Brookline, MA Consultant, Coach, & Trainer Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio ALM Team Foundation Server, Software Testing, Scrum, Software Architecture Scrum.org Classes –Professional Scrum Developer (PSD) –Professional Scrum Foundations (PSF) www.benday.com, benday@benday.com, @benday

3. Online courses at Pluralsight.com

5. Why did I write this talk?

6. TOP 10 THINGS

7. The List. 1. Be humble 2. Object- orientation 3. Write less code 4. Value Types vs. Reference Types 5. Exceptions 6. Generics 7. Collections 8. IDisposable, using, & garbage collection 9. LINQ 10. Lambda Expressions 11. Async & Await

8. Some extras. 11. Virtual, override, & new() 12. Tune out the “static” 13. Partial classes & methods 14. Covarience contravariance 15. Named parameters 16. Optional parameters 17. Dynamic keyword

9. #1: Be humble.

10. Be humble. Software is complex. We developers… –…want to please –…think we’re awesome –…almost always underestimate

11. Tips. Keep it simple. Expect to make mistakes. Not everyone will understand your abstractions. Favor maintainability over “slickness”. Write unit tests. Lots of unit tests.

12. Tip for managers. Your devs are afraid of you.

13. Tip for executives. Your devs are afraid of you. Your project managers are afraid of you. Your project managers are afraid of the devs.

14. “C# doesn’t do Xyz. C# sucks.” Lesson I learned. There’s a reason it’s built that way. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Learn from the design.

15. #2: Remember Object-Orientation

16. Object-Oriented Principles The 4 tenets. What are they? Encapsulation Polymorphism Inheritance Abstraction

17. #3: Write less code

18. Save some typing.

19. Less is more. (as long as it’s readable)

20. Everything you write has to be maintained.

21. Whatever has to be maintained is “inventory.”

22. var vs. object

23. Auto-Implemented Properties

24. Read-Only Auto-Implemented Properties

25. …and now I’m going to contradict myself.

26. Avoid ternary operators

27. #4: Value types vs. reference types

28. Whuh? Value Types Non-object types Stored in memory “stack” int, long, char, byte, etc. float, double decimal bool User-defined –Structs –Enumerations Reference Types Object types Stored in memory “heap” Variables are “pointers” to memory location

29. Boxing and Unboxing Boxing –Process of wrapping a value type in an object reference Unboxing –Converting a boxed value type object back into an value type variable

30. #5: Exception Handling

31. Throw vs. throw ex throw;throw ex;

32. #6: Generics

33. What are generics? Syntax that allows you to use similar functionality with different types in a type- safe way Implementation is the same Data types are different

34. ViewModelField DomainObjectManager

35. #7: Collections

36. What is a Collection? Data type for organizing lists of objects Similar to an array

37. Part of the.NET framework 5 namespaces

38. Array vs. List Array vs. List Array Size defined when created List Automatically expands

39. ArrayList vs. List ArrayList vs. List ArrayList Not type-safe Everything is an object Watch out for boxing / unboxing List Type-safe Everything must be an instance of T

40. #8: IDisposable, Using, and Garbage Collection

41. What is Garbage Collection? Background process in.NET Determines when an object is not needed Deletes it “automagically” Frees up memory You worry much less about memory management.

42. IDisposable

43. IDisposable: Custom Cleanup Gets called when the Garbage Collector is disposing your object Add custom logic For example, close any open database connections

45. What does the ‘using’ statement do? Wraps instance of IDisposable for block of code Instance is disposed automatically at the end of the code block

46. Wrap database connections in ‘using’ blocks Most database classes implement IDisposable

47. Why should you wrap calls to database object in ‘using’ statements?

48. But there’s a catch.

49. The Garbage Collector doesn’t call IDisposable.Dispose().

50. If you want to be bulletproof…

51. …implement IDisposable along with a Destructor.

52. #9: LINQ

53. LINQ Language-Integrated Query Enables SQL-like querying of objects via IEnumerable

54. LINQ Stuff Operators select from where orderby Useful functions FirstOrDefault() First() Min() Max() Count() Skip() Take() Reverse() Sum()

55. (Code Demo: LinqSample.cs)

56. #10: Lambda expressions

57. What’s a “lambda expression”? Anonymous functions Helpful for delegates

58. (Code Demos: LambdaExpressionSample.cs & LambdaExpressionForm.cs)

59. #11: Async & Await

60. Async programming is a pain in the donkey.

61. I complain about discuss this in a couple of articles.

62. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/jj658977.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/jj658977.aspx

63. Why? Async calls are really 3 calls. 1) the initiator 2) the do-er 3) the return handler They don’t share the same call stack.

64. Who cares? Since they don’t share the same call stack you can’t… …return values using the return keyword …throw an exception –(DOH!!!)

65. Async & Await Async is all over the place in Windows Phone, Windows Store / WinRT, and Silverlight Async, Await, Task, Task help take the pain out of async programming. (New for Visual Studio 2012 &.NET 4.5)

66. How does async & await work?

67. Basically, async & await injects a lot of glue to knit the calls together.

68. Additional Reading Essential C# 5.0 by Mark Michaelis Great overview of the language http://amzn.com/032187 7586 http://amzn.com/032187 7586

69. Additional Reading CLR via C# by Jeffrey Richter What’s going on under the hood of C# and the.NET Framework http://amzn.com/073566 7454 http://amzn.com/073566 7454

70. The List. 1. Be humble 2. Object- orientation 3. Write less code 4. Value Types vs. Reference Types 5. Exceptions 6. Generics 7. Collections 8. IDisposable, using, & garbage collection 9. LINQ 10. Lambda Expressions 11. Async & Await

71. Thank you. http://www.benday.comhttp://www.benday.com | benday@benday.combenday@benday.com