Effective C# (Covers C# 4.0): 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#, 2nd Edition

Product Author Bios

With more than twenty years of experience, Bill Wagner, SRT Solutions cofounder, is a recognized expert in software design and engineering, specializing in C#, .NET, and the Azure platform. He serves as Michigan’s Regional Director for Microsoft and is a multiyear winner of Microsoft’s MVP award. An internationally recognized writer, Bill is the author of the first edition of this book and More Effective C# (Addison-Wesley, 2009) and currently writes a column on the Microsoft C# Developer Center. Bill earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

C# has matured over the past decade: It’s now a rich language with generics, functional programming concepts, and support for both static and dynamic typing. This palette of techniques provides great tools for many different idioms, but there are also many ways to make mistakes. In Effective C#, Second Edition, respected .NET expert Bill Wagner identifies fifty ways you can leverage the full power of the C# 4.0 language to express your designs concisely and clearly.

Effective C#, Second Edition, follows a clear format that makes it indispensable to hundreds of thousands of developers: clear, practical explanations, expert tips, and plenty of realistic code examples. Drawing on his unsurpassed C# experience, Wagner addresses everything from types to resource management to dynamic typing to multicore support in the C# language and the .NET framework. Along the way, he shows how to avoid common pitfalls in the C# language and the .NET environment. You’ll learn how to

• Use both types of C# constants for efficiency and maintainability (see Item 2)
• Employ immutable data types to promote multicore processing (see Item 20)
• Minimize garbage collection, boxing, and unboxing (see Items 16 and 45)
• Take full advantage of interfaces and delegates (see Items 22 though 25)
• Make the most of the parallel framework (see Items 35 through 37)
• Use duck typing in C# (see Item 38)
• Spot the advantages of the dynamic and Expression types over reflection (see Items 42 and 43)
• Assess why query expressions are better than loops (see Item 8)
• Understand how generic covariance and contravariance affect your designs (see Item 29)
• See how optional parameters can minimize the number of method overloads (see Item 10)

You’re already a successful C# programmer–this book will help you become an outstanding one.

Related Articles

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Author's Site

Please visit the author's companion site at srtsolutions.com/blogs/billwagner.

You can download the code samples from elevate.codeplex.com.

Online Sample Chapters

Effective C# Item 34: Avoid Overloading Methods Defined in Base Classes

Effective C# Item 42: Understand How to Make Use of the Expression API

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

Chapter 1: C# Language Idioms 1

Item 1: Use Properties Instead of Accessible Data Members 1

Item 2: Prefer readonly to const 8

Item 3: Prefer the is or as Operators to Casts 12

Item 4: Use Conditional Attributes Instead of #if 20

Item 5: Always Provide ToString() 28

Item 6: Understand the Relationships Among the Many Different Concepts of Equality 36

Item 7: Understand the Pitfalls of GetHashCode() 44

Item 8: Prefer Query Syntax to Loops 51

Item 9: Avoid Conversion Operators in Your APIs 56

Item 10: Use Optional Parameters to Minimize Method Overloads 60

Item 11: Understand the Attraction of Small Functions 64

Chapter 2: .NET Resource Management 69

Item 12: Prefer Member Initializers to Assignment Statements 74

Item 13: Use Proper Initialization for Static Class Members 77

Item 14: Minimize Duplicate Initialization Logic 79

Item 15: Utilize using and try/finally for Resource Cleanup 87

Item 16: Avoid Creating Unnecessary Objects 94

Item 17: Implement the Standard Dispose Pattern 98

Item 18: Distinguish Between Value Types and Reference Types 104

Item 19: Ensure That 0 Is a Valid State for Value Types 110

Item 20: Prefer Immutable Atomic Value Types 114

Chapter 3: Expressing Designs in C# 125

Item 21: Limit Visibility of Your Types 126

Item 22: Prefer Defining and Implementing Interfaces to Inheritance 129

Item 23: Understand How Interface Methods Differ from Virtual Methods 139

Item 24: Express Callbacks with Delegates 143

Item 25: Implement the Event Pattern for Notifications 146

Item 26: Avoid Returning References to Internal Class Objects 154

Item 27: Prefer Making Your Types Serializable 157

Item 28: Create Large-Grain Internet Service APIs 166

Item 29: Support Generic Covariance and Contravariance 171

Chapter 4: Working with the Framework 179

Item 30: Prefer Overrides to Event Handlers 179

Item 31: Implement Ordering Relations with IComparable<T> and IComparer<T> 183

Item 32: Avoid ICloneable 190

Item 33: Use the new Modifier Only to React to Base Class Updates 194

Item 34: Avoid Overloading Methods Defined in Base Classes 198

Item 35: Learn How PLINQ Implements Parallel Algorithms 203

Item 36: Understand How to Use PLINQ for I/O Bound Operations 215

Item 37: Construct Parallel Algorithms with Exceptions in Mind 220

Chapter 5: Dynamic Programming in C# 227

Item 38: Understand the Pros and Cons of Dynamic 227

Item 39: Use Dynamic to Leverage the Runtime Type of Generic Type Parameters 236

Item 40: Use Dynamic for Parameters That Receive Anonymous Types 239

Item 41: Use DynamicObject or IDynamicMetaObjectProvider for Data-Driven Dynamic Types 243

Item 42: Understand How to Make Use of the Expression API 254

Item 43: Use Expressions to Transform Late Binding into Early Binding 261

Item 44: Minimize Dynamic Objects in Public APIs 267

Chapter 6: Miscellaneous 275

Item 45: Minimize Boxing and Unboxing 275

Item 46: Create Complete Application-Specific Exception Classes 279

Item 47: Prefer the Strong Exception Guarantee 284

Item 48: Prefer Safe Code 294

Item 49: Prefer CLS-Compliant Assemblies 298

Item 50: Prefer Smaller, Cohesive Assemblies 303

Index 309

Sample Pages

Download the sample pages (includes Items 34 and 42 and Index)