The C# Programming Language (Covering C# 4.0)

“Based on my own experience, I can safely say that every .NET developer who reads this will have at least one ‘aha’ moment and will be a better developer for it.”

–From the Foreword by Don Box 

The popular C# programming language combines the high productivity of rapid application development languages with the raw power of C and C++. Updated to cover the new features of C# 4.0, including dynamic binding, named and optional parameters, and covariant and contravariant generic types, this release takes the language to the next level by adding the ability to cleanly write programs that don’t rely on static type definitions. This allows dynamic programming languages such as Python, Ruby, and JavaScript to feel native to C#. The C# Programming Language, Fourth Edition, continues to be the authoritative and annotated technical reference for C# 4.0.

Written by Anders Hejlsberg, the language’s architect, and his colleagues, Mads Torgersen, Scott Wiltamuth, and Peter Golde, this volume has been completely updated for C# 4.0. The book provides the complete specification of the language, along with descriptions, reference materials, code samples, and annotations from twelve prominent C# gurus.

The many annotations bring a depth and breadth of understanding rarely found in any programming book. As the main text of the book introduces the concepts of the C# language, cogent annotations explain why they are important, how they are used, how they relate to other languages, and even how they evolved.

This book is the definitive, must-have reference for any developer who wants to understand C#. With annotations from: Brad Abrams, Joseph Albahari, Krzysztof Cwalina, Jesse Liberty, Eric Lippert, Christian Nagel, Vladimir Reshetnikov, Marek Safar, Chris Sells, Peter Sestoft, Jon Skeet, and Bill Wagner.

Anders Hejlsberg is a programming legend. He is the architect of the C# language and a Microsoft Technical Fellow. He joined Microsoft Corporation in 1996, following a thirteen-year career at Borland, where he was the chief architect of Delphi and Turbo Pascal.

Mads Torgersen is the Program Manager for the C# language at Microsoft, where he runs the day-to-day language design process and maintains the language specification.

Scott Wiltamuth is Director of Program Management for the Visual Studio Professional team at Microsoft Corporation. At Microsoft, he has worked on a wide range of development tools, including OLE Automation, Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, VBScript, JScript, Visual J++, and Visual C#.

Peter Golde was the lead developer of the original Microsoft C# compiler. As the primary Microsoft representative on the ECMA committee that standardized C#, he led the implementation of the compiler and worked on the language design. He is currently an architect at Microsoft working on compilers.