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  • ElementAtOrDefault

    VB 9 or later has a particular feature that can make life easier in some circumstances: the compiler allows you to access indexed items on non indexed enumerables.   Let’s say you have code such as: Dim items as IEnumerable(Of String) . . . . For i = 0 to items.Count - 1    Debug...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Mon, Dec 14 2009
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  • IntPtr gets operators !!!

    This seems so incredibly long overdue, but at last as of .NET 4, IntPtr has + and – operators added to it !! This means you can now easily write code such as :     Dim ptr As IntPtr     . . . .     ptr += 4   this is great when dealing with offsets etc...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Wed, Nov 4 2009
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  • VS 2008 is LIVE !!!

    Just spotted it on MSDN subscriber downloads. Enjoy :)
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Mon, Nov 19 2007
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  • Update on Snippet Editor

    I've finally given the Snippet Editor a major make over including a new look. To go with this, I've given it a new home on my web site: http://billmccarthy.com/Projects/Snippet_Editor And I've added a Snippets category to this blog for feedback, info etc. I'll update the web page with...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Mon, Nov 12 2007
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  • Snippet Editor 2008 release

    I've updated the Snippet editor to work with Visual Studio 2008 and 2005 releases. Note this release requires .NET 3.5. Changes/fixes: Added 2008 product range to the list of products Fixed replacement of the install root variable for Visual Studio that was resulting in a double \ midway of file...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Tue, Nov 6 2007
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  • Oh so you want polymorphism ???

    I recall almost four years ago to this day, I was at the 2003 PDC in LA. On the last day of the conference, the head architects of different .NET languages got together and talked about language directions, generics and some of the "VS 2005" stream of things. There was a Q&A session at...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Sun, Nov 4 2007
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  • Counting deck chairs on the titanic

    Paul Vick released some statistics in relation to VB , which for discussion sake I'll repeat here : Visual Basic is the #1 .NET language (as reported by Forrester Research) Visual Basic is the #1 downloaded and #1 registered Express Edition (topping the #2 position by 20%) Visual Basic is the #1...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Fri, Nov 2 2007
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  • Schemas in the scheme of things...

    I got an interesting email today, which, to paraphrase, said: I would like a syntax where I can say “an XElement that follows this XSD" This question actually digs deep into the issue of strong typing versus dynamic typing and what it really is we want from a type system. A lot of people think of...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Sun, Oct 28 2007
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  • When is something ready to be marked as Deprecated ?

    Of programming languages, VB has in many ways had a checkered history mainly due to the changes from VB6 to VB7 (VB.NET). I remember clearly the change from "Wend" to "End While". Some folks claimed that was "gratuitous". To me, I couldn't see what the big deal was about...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Tue, Oct 16 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts (part 9)

    31. Templates for anonymous types It'd be nice if you could change the template used for anonymous types, such as to include INotifyPropertyChanged or other functionality. If you add a template to your project, you could then specify which template to use, e:g Dim customer = New With{.FirstName="Fred"...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Tue, Oct 16 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts (part 8)

    Today I was only going to add one, item, #29, but in writing the samples for it two more items came to mind. One however was an IDE thing more than a language thing, so just 2 items for the list today :) 29. Embrace declarative style coding VB led the way with declarative coding in .Net with declarative...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Thu, Oct 11 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts (part 7)

    I've still got some more thoughts, but these are beginning to be big items, so I'm only touching on two more today Backing fields nested inside Properties Public Property Name() As String Dim m_Name As String Get Return m_Name End Get Set ( ByVal value As String ) m_Name = value End Set End Property...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Thu, Oct 11 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts (part 6)

    Standardization IOSO or ECMA standardization, to allow fully open development and meet organizational and governmental requirements for open standards. At present part of the language is under Patent protection, making it unclear for example if a third party provider can use the IsNot operator for example...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Wed, Oct 10 2007
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  • Playing with Extensions and Expressions

    Expression trees allow you to walk through all the information about an expression. So you can use this to create a NameOf function similar to the one I outlined in my post on VB 10 thoughts (part 5) <Extension()> _ Function NameOf( Of T1)( ByVal obj As T1, ByVal fn As Expression( Of Func( Of T1...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Wed, Oct 10 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts (part 5)

    a NameOf operator you could use this similar to TypeOf, but to get the name of a class or a method or property etc. NameOf could be used : - without any operand to return the name of the current method/property, e.g NameOf() - using an object reference ot get a typename, e.g NameOf(Me) gives the name...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Wed, Oct 10 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts (part 4)

    still teasing out thoughts from the cobwebs Date literals today in VB you can only specify date literals in the format of #MM/dd/yyyy# That's incredibly USA centric. I'd like to input date literals in the form of dd/MM/yyyy, but because that would cause an ambiguity, I'd really like to see...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Mon, Oct 8 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts (part 3)

    More language thoughts for VB10 (see part1 and part2 for earlier posts) Delegate combining and removing syntax Today in VB if you write a Custom Event handler, you have to write some really long winded code to combine and remove delegates, such as : Custom Event Click As EventHandler AddHandler(ByVal...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Fri, Oct 5 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts (part 2)

    Continuing thoughts on the language from yesterday : Multiple assignment Todd suggested this yesterday in reply to my post. I don't like the use of the := syntax, rather I'd like to see a grouping used, such as : (x, y) = 5 That would be the equivalent of x = 5 : y = 5 Differentiate between equality...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Thu, Oct 4 2007
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  • VB 10 thoughts ...

    Paul Vick has started the conversation about VB 10 features and thoughts. Off the top of my head in no particular order here's some things I'd like to see in the language: complete Optional parameters Optional parameters are one of my favorite features but there's a couple of problems with...
    Posted to @ Head by bill on Thu, Oct 4 2007
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