.NET Sleepers

In the vast universe that is .NET, there is almost no way to know about everything you have right at your fingertips (literally). Every once in a while I come across something and have an 'ah ha' moment (and a subsequent 'Oops' moment when I think about something I did that I could have gotten for free.) So in an effort to help others avoid some sleepers, here are some great articles I have come across in my travels on random topics in the framework.

Tracing

Some of you may know about the static Trace class from .NET 1.0, or you may have written your own debugging support library, well some really cool Tracing support was added in 2.0 that you might not know about. Here's a good series on the topic:

Tracing Primer - Part I
Tracing Primer Part II(A)
Tracing Primer Part II(B)
Tracing Primer Part II(C)

The best part about really instrumenting your app or framework, especially a layered framework, is that, when debug time comes, you can configure the TraceListeners however you want (post-compile) and get just the visibility you need for debugging. Imagine tracing the order of execution through a layered stack - if each layer had its own trace channel (called a TraceSource), you could have them all write to the same trace file and see the execution of calls through the whole stack. For those working with WPF, you might also want to check out this.

Anonymous Delegates

Not necessarily a sleeper, but mysterious to some no less. Here is a series on Anonymous Delegates, they are a powerful concept, and look out for the new stuff in 3.5, it gets even better!

The implementation of anonymous methods in C# and its consequences (part 1)
The implementation of anonymous methods in C# and its consequences (part 2)
The implementation of anonymous methods in C# and its consequences (part 3)

Functional Programming, Lambdas

Here's a great series to get you thinking about some of the awesomeness that is .NET 3.5. I don't know if this could be called a sleeper because it's so new, but you shouldn't miss it. If 'Functional Programming' is boring to you, you should still read to check out some of the new C# 3.0 stuff.

Lambdas and Closures and Currying. Oh my! (Parts 1 - 4)
Lambdas and Closures and Currying. Oh my! (Parts 5 - 9)


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