It's been a scandalously long time since I've blogged about C#, and now that the first C# 6 preview bits are available, that feels like exactly the right thing to set the keys clacking again. Don't expect anything massively insightful from me just yet; I'd heard Mads and Dustin (individually) talk about some new features of C# 6 at conferences, but this is the first opportunity I've had to play with the bits. There are more features to come, and I suspect that the ones we've got aren't in quite the shape t[...]

It’s been a scandalously long time since I’ve blogged about C#, and now that the first C# 6 preview bits are available, that feels like exactly the right thing to set the keys clacking again. Don’t expect anything massively insightful from me just yet; I’d heard Mads and Dustin (individually) talk about some new features […]

I was recently directed to an article on "tiny types" - an approach to static typing which introduces distinct types for the sake of code clarity, rather than to add particular behaviour to each type. As I understand it, they're like type aliases with no conversions between the various types. (Unlike plain aliases, an object is genuinely an instance of the relevant tiny type - it doesn't have "alias erasure" as a language-based solution could easily do.) I like the idea, and wish it were better supported [...]

I was recently directed to an article on "tiny types" – an approach to static typing which introduces distinct types for the sake of code clarity, rather than to add particular behaviour to each type. As I understand it, they’re like type aliases with no conversions between the various types. (Unlike plain aliases, an object […]

I see a lot of problems which look somewhat different at first glance, but all have the same cause: Text is losing "special characters" when I transfer it from one computer to another Decryption ends up with garbage Compressed data can't be decompressed I can transfer text but not binary data These are all cases of transforming and (usually) transferring data, and then performing the reverse transformation. Often there are multiple transformations involved, and they need to be carefully [...]