As the title indicates, this article will be about C# tips and tricks. I'll cover some of the C# 3.0 language features, explore productivity gains with the Visual Studio 2008 C# IDE, and mention a couple of handy Visual Studio plug-ins that may be of interest. This deviates from the traditional articles I've presented in the past and will hopefully provide some value in its own way.
C# 3.0 Background
C# 3.0 was released as a part of the Microsoft .NET 3.5 Framework. The main purpose was to provide a foundation for Language INtegrated Query (LINQ) to provide unified data access capability. Each enhancement also can be used on its own. Here is a list of the features you'll cover and learn some related tips:
- Automatically implemented properties
- Using Keyword
- Object and collection intitializers
- Local type inference
- Extension methods
Automatically Implemented Properties
Automatically implemented properties offer a concise syntax for implementing property accessors that get and set a private field. They create a field backed property without requiring you to actually create a field. The compiler automatically generates it for you at compile time. They can be used only for simple get and set of properties because there is no body and no field. No property body means no breakpoints or validation logic can be used. No field means no default value. Typing "prop [tab][tab]" is the Visual Studio code snippet for producing an automatically implemented property. This can make your code much more concise. A classic example of a field back property might look something like the code below.
private int myProperty = 0;
public int MyProperty
{
get { return this.myProperty; }
set { this.myProperty = value; }
}
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