C# 2.0 Spec Released

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft released the design specifications document for C# 2.0 (codenamed 'Whidbey') to be released early next year. New features of the language include generics similar to those found in Eiffel and Ada, anonymous methods similar to lambda functions in Lisp, iterators, and partial types."

Comments

Re:Who gives a shit about C#

[Anonymous Coward]

C# is ECMA standardized. Java is wholly owned by Sun. Sun has repeatedly balked at standardizing Java due to the inherent loss of control.

Perhaps there are potential submarine patents, but Java is absolutely vendor-tied while C# is at least relatively open.

Re:Does adding every ingredient make it better?

[Tom7]

No, but consider the competition. C++ is insanely complicated and broken, and is popular. Perl is insanely broken and complicated, and it is popular.

Anyway, anonymous higher order functions and generics are two really glaring deficiencies in Java, C#, and many other modern OO languages, so adding them is a step in the right direction. It's not as if these are minor, useless features.

> Is this their plan to "lock in" universities to teaching microsoft programing to all levels, because it will take
> 4 years of classes just to cover it all?

That's crazy. Universities don't teach programming languages except as tools to teach more important concepts.

Re:Does adding every ingredient make it better?

[Qzukk]

That's crazy. Universities don't teach programming languages except as tools to teach more important concepts.

Thats a great idea. Sounds great on paper, sounds great in theory. Sounds great while you're playing around with a bubble sort.

After that, its a load of crap.

Tell you what: You learn your bubble sort however you want. Your assignment is to write a program that uses a row colored spheres with numbers texture mapped to the surface of the sphere to demonstrate how the bubble sort actually operates.

I learned to do this at my university, and was lucky enough to get a professor that hadn't bought into the Windows Thing, and tought graphics programming with OpenGL (available everywhere) instead of DirectX (available in windows, and if you're lucky, wine).

In fact, when you get out of your pretty little university, you can try and get a job on "I know my programming theory". If you don't know the language and APIs that Company X is using, you're sunk. These days they don't settle for learning on the job. I had a wonderful job interview for developing an interesting application, I wowed them all with my knowledge, except for one little thing: I didn't know Perl/GTK which was what they were writing their application in. A few weeks later I got a check in the mail for my flight, car rental, and hotel and a thank you letter for taking the time to interview them in person.

innovation

[pizza_milkshake]

wow, that will they think of next?

Re:Does adding every ingredient make it better?

[yoshi_mon]

C is a low level language and makes no bones about it being such.

Is such a high level language such as one that is designed to run upon other protocals the same?

No.

Re:gc#?

[edalytical]

college computer science people *are* learning it

What colleges are teaching C#? At my school we had one Pascal course then went into C followed by C++. I believe we could have taken Assembly right after Pascal, but I'll take that after I finish C++. I've heard of other schools starting with java or even python. I'm not arguing that schools don't teach C#, I just want to know which ones do so I can be sure not to transfer there.

Re:Does adding every ingredient make it better?

[deranged unix nut]

Personally, a "broken" language is a language that requires so much work to do things right that programmers that use them frequently do things wrong. For example, my all time favorite security flaw: the buffer overflow.

A good language should support the development of code that doesn't contain common flaws. In my opinion, C and C++ are directly responsible for security flaws that cost trillions.

Re:Does adding every ingredient make it better?

[Randolpho]

Universities are right to teach important concepts (and not just algorithms like bubble-sort -- that's friggin freshmen stuff anyway) like software engineering, project managment, relational algebra (i.e. database stuff), networking, AI, parsing, logic, circuit design, and (I'm lumping here) under-the-hood operating system concepts.

If you've got a Computer Science degree, and you payed attention, you can pick up the syntax for a new language within an hour. With a good API reference, you can be banging out code like an old pro with a weekend of study. It's not that hard.

What matters far more than how well you know a language is how well you know how to program. Any monkey with a keyboard can whip out a Visual Basic app.

But to write truly masterful code... that transcends skill with a language and approaches art.

That said, I'm going to contradict myself: it's important to know the basic capabilities of the language you're working with. Java would be a shitty language to write, say, a program that computes the sum of the two numbers input to it on the command line, because it takes so long for the VM to load -- far more than the actual execution time of the program.

Fortunately, things like that can be quickly learned.

Re:Who gives a shit about the ECMA?

[Arker]

Have things changed so much that we can trust Microsoft and its "standards body" largely consisting of companies dependent on Microsoft to keep all extensions to this "standard" in the open and available to all players?

Of course not.

But those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it.

Re:ugh

[Slime-dogg]

Wrong.

Pascal is not meant for serious programming like C is, but Pascal has sorta grown into this business application language, and is far from obsolete.

You also cannot do anything in C++ that you can in C. You can do this in C, but not C++:

void f(); /* argument types not mentioned */

void g()
{
f(2); /* poor style C. Not C++ */
}

Or...

void* malloc(size_t);

void f(int n)
{
int* p = malloc(n*sizeof(char)); /* not C++. In C++, allocate using `new' */
char c;
void* pv = &c;
int* pi = pv; /* implicit conversion of void* to int*. Not in C++ */
}

These examples were shamelessly ripped from Bjarne's FAQ, which is available Here.