C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, LINQPad and Pure Genius

I absolutely love what the Albahari brothers (Joe & Ben) have done with C# 3.0 in a Nutshell. Not only is their prose concise in a way that mine is not, but I have learned a bunch of stuff about LINQ I didn't know, they built a tool (LINQPad) that lets you experiment with LINQ interactively in a way that the designers of LINQ themselves don't support and the tool has all kinds of wonderful features that LINQ, SQL and Regular Expression programmers alike will want to use regularly long after they've read the book.

And if that weren't enough, the tool comes with an integrated tree of samples that follow along with the material in the book, teaching the material from another angle and reinforcing it perfectly. It's pure genius and if I ever write another book, it's a model I'm going to follow. Very highly recommended.

Speaking of C# 3.0: has anyone seen any docs explaining which C# 3 features are just compiler tricks that can be used when targeting .NET 2 assemblies, and which require new runtime features and so can only be used when targeting .NET 3.5?

I believe they pretty much all are -- the new framework version targeting in VS08 should keep you out of trouble.

Well, in the "compiler tricks" category, the only one I can think of LINQ syntax to LINQ expression translation (ie, "from P in db.People select p.Name" to "db.People.Select(p=>p.Name)" ) but that matters little, as the resulting LINQ expression requires CLR changes.

no shit. i rushed to buy the book this weekend. havent read anything so rich and well written since CLR via C#. Top notch stuff highly recommend it!!

LINQPad == cool

Microsoft != cool for not having easy way to allow 3rd party software like LINQPad to pull in the C# Intellisense atleast IF I have VS already installed on the computer.

I don't think it's unreasonable for MS to allow pulling in C# Intellisense/editor to other programs assuming the user has Visual Studio already.

Even better if only the VS Express was needed for doing that of course :-)

Amen to that, zzz!

James Curran, it doesn't need CLR changes, but BCL changes. The CLR is still .NET 2.0 even if you're doing .NET 3.5/C# 3.0.

LINQPad makes it easy to think what you have imagine!a masterpiece of aimed work.