Wacky Ideas

How many 32-bit types might we want?

By jonskeet

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 in languages – but it led me to thinking more about the existing … Continue reading How many 32-bit types might we want?

Array covariance: not just ugly, but slow too

By jonskeet

It seems to be quite a long time since I’ve written a genuine "code" blog post. Time to fix that. This material may well be covered elsewhere – it’s certainly not terrifically original, and I’ve been meaning to post about it for a long time. In particular, I remember mentioning it at CodeMash in 2012. Anyway, the time has now come. Refresher on array covariance Just as a bit of background before we delve into the performance aspect, let me remind you what array covariance is, and when it applies. The basic idea is that C# allows a reference conversion … Continue reading Array covariance: not just ugly, but slow too

Coding in the style of Glee

By jonskeet

As previously mentioned, at CodeMash 2012 I gave a very silly Pecha Kucha talk entitled "Coding in the style of Glee". The video is on YouTube, or can be seen embedded below: (There’s also another YouTube video from a different angle.) This post gives the 20 slides (which were just text; no fancy pictures unlike my competitors) and what I meant to say about them. (Edited very slightly to remove a couple of CodeMash-specific in-jokes.) Don’t forget that each slide was only up for 20 seconds. Coding in the style of Glee As you may know, I’m from the UK, … Continue reading Coding in the style of Glee

Eduasync part 13: first look at coroutines with async

By jonskeet

(This part covers project 18 in the source code.) As I mentioned in earlier parts, the "awaiting" part of async methods is in no way limited to tasks. So long as we have a suitable GetAwaiter() method which returns a value of a type which in turn has suitable methods on it, the compiler doesn’t really care what’s going on. It’s time to exploit that to implement some form of coroutines in C#. Introduction to coroutines The fundamental idea of coroutines is to have multiple methods executing cooperatively, each of them maintaining their position within the coroutine when they yield … Continue reading Eduasync part 13: first look at coroutines with async

Of memory and strings

By jonskeet

This post was provoked by a recent Stack Overflow question which asked whether there was an efficient representation of ASCII strings in .NET. In particular, the questioner wanted to story hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of strings in memory, and knowing (or assuming) that they all consisted of ASCII characters, he wanted to avoid the waste of space that comes from storing each character in a .NET string as a UTF-16 code unit. My answer to the question mostly consisted of saying that I didn’t think it would be worth the effort, and giving some reasons. But the … Continue reading Of memory and strings

A Model/View to a Kill (Naked came the null delegate, part 5)

By jonskeet

(I suggest you read the earlier parts of the story first. I’m not claiming it’ll make any more sense afterwards, mind you.) Even though Seymour Sharpton’s brain was in a spinlock, a low-level interrupt brought him out of his stupor – namely, an enormous motorcycle bursting through the floor near the daemon. It was impossible to tell the form of the rider under the leather and helmet. When the biker spoke, the voice was digitally disguised but its authority was clear: "Sharpton. Here, now. The rest of you: you know me. Follow us, and there’ll be trouble." Algol hissed sharply, … Continue reading A Model/View to a Kill (Naked came the null delegate, part 5)

The curious case of the publicity-seeking interface and the shy abstract class

By jonskeet

Noda Time has a guilty secret, and I’m not just talking about the fact that there’s been very little progress on it recently. (It’s not dead as a project – I have high hopes, when I can put some quality time into it.) This secret is called LocalInstant, and it’s a pain in the neck. One of the nice things about giving talks about an API you’re currently writing is that you can see which concepts make sense to people, and which don’t – as well as seeing which concepts you’re able to explain and which you can’t. LocalInstant has … Continue reading The curious case of the publicity-seeking interface and the shy abstract class

Non-iterable collection initializers

By jonskeet

Yesterday on Stack Overflow, I mentioned that sometimes I make a type implement IEnumerable just so that I can use collection initializers with it. In such a situation, I use explicit interface implementation (despite not really needing to – I’m not implementing IEnumerable<T>) and leave it throwing a NotImplementedException. (EDIT: As noted in the comments, throwing NotSupportedException would probably be more appropriate. In many cases it would actually be pretty easy to implement this in some sort of meaningful fashion… although I quite like throwing an exception to indicate that it’s not really intended to be treated as a sequence.) … Continue reading Non-iterable collection initializers

Code and data

By jonskeet

In a recent Stack Overflow question, I answered a question which started off with a broken XPath expression by suggesting that that poster might be better off using LINQ to XML instead. The discussion which followed in the comments (around whether or not this was an appropriate answer) led me to think about the nature of code and data, and how important context is. I don’t think there’s any particularly deep insight in this post – so I’ll attempt to keep it relatively short. However, you might like to think about how code and data interact in your own experience, … Continue reading Code and data

Iterate, damn you!

By jonskeet

Do you know the hardest thing about presenting code with surprising results? It’s hard to do so without effectively inviting readers to look for the trick. Not that that’s always enough – I failed the last of Neal and Eric’s C# puzzlers at NDC, for example. (If you haven’t already watched the video, please do so now. It’s far more entertaining than this blog post.) Anyway, this one may be obvious to some of you, but there are some interesting aspects even when you’ve got the twist, as it were. What does the following code print? using System; using System.Collections.Generic; … Continue reading Iterate, damn you!