Newsgroup FAQ - please contribute

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

A while ago (too long ago) I agreed to start up a FAQ for this
newsgroup.

Today, I've finally got it into a sufficiently reasonable form that
it's worth putting up.

It's at http://www.pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/faq/

Please feel free to criticise, suggest more questions (preferrably with
answers!) etc. Also feel *more* than free to point people at it when
the FAQs are asked!

If people feel that it would be worth posting a link to the FAQ each
week or fortnight, I'd be happy to do that too.

 

[Erik Frey]

Jon,

This looks like an excellent start. I have a question about scope - do
you think it's appropriate to have ADO.NET/Windows Forms/whatever else
questions in the FAQ? These topics do have their own newsgroups, although
dotnet.languages.csharp does seem to umbrella over all sorts of topics, so
it's hard to say. Including all of this stuff could eventually amount to a
massive FAQ.

I'm just a guy who randomly answers a question or two on a friday
afternoon, but I'll be sure to reference your FAQ when I can. I look
forward to seeing it develop.

Erik

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

This looks like an excellent start. I have a question about scope - do
you think it's appropriate to have ADO.NET/Windows Forms/whatever else
questions in the FAQ? These topics do have their own newsgroups, although
dotnet.languages.csharp does seem to umbrella over all sorts of topics, so
it's hard to say. Including all of this stuff could eventually amount to a
massive FAQ.

I'm quite happy for it to be a massive FAQ - the way I see it, it's
better to have people read the FAQ and not post the somewhat off-topic
questions than to be unable to find the answers. It's a FAQ of
questions which are frequently asked on the group, rather than a FAQ of
questions which *should* be frequently asked, if you see what I mean

I may well end up having to break it into multiple pages, of course,
but I don't see that being terribly difficult.

I'm just a guy who randomly answers a question or two on a friday
afternoon, but I'll be sure to reference your FAQ when I can. I look
forward to seeing it develop.

Goodo

 

[n!]

Today, I've finally got it into a sufficiently reasonable form that

it's worth putting up.

It's at http://www.pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/faq/

A quick glance and an immediate FAQ that's missing is "What's the equivalent
of 'nothing' [From VB?] in C#?" ('null'). Which seems to crop up quite often


I shall look more later on when I get home from work, but looks like good
work!

n!

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Today, I've finally got it into a sufficiently reasonable form that
it's worth putting up.

It's at http://www.pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/faq/

A quick glance and an immediate FAQ that's missing is "What's the equivalent
of 'nothing' [From VB?] in C#?" ('null'). Which seems to crop up quite often

Righto - I'll put that in (with the caveat that Nothing is also
"whatever the default value is" in VB.NET, so it's 0 for an int etc, as
far as I know).

Actually, a "VB to C# migration" section wouldn't be a bad idea...

I shall look more later on when I get home from work, but looks like good
work!

Cheers

 

[Erik Frey]

Actually, a "VB to C# migration" section wouldn't be a bad idea...

Absolutely. The following come to mind off the top of my head:
Null/nothing, Me/MyBase/MyClass/base/this, addressof, escape characters and
the @ symbol.

Erik

 

[Bill Styles]

Absolutely. The following come to mind off the top of my head:
Null/nothing, Me/MyBase/MyClass/base/this, addressof, escape
characters and the @ symbol.

case sensitivity
semicolons
parens vs brackets

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

case sensitivity
semicolons
parens vs brackets

What would you like me to put about them? If you could suggest how the
questions and answers would be phrased, that would be very helpful - I
don't really know VB.NET myself, so any help on this subject would be
very useful. I've done the first few bits, but more input from VB.NET
users (or ex-users) would be great.

 

[Bill Styles]

What would you like me to put about them? If you could suggest how the
questions and answers would be phrased, that would be very helpful - I
don't really know VB.NET myself, so any help on this subject would be
very useful. I've done the first few bits, but more input from VB.NET
users (or ex-users) would be great.

I used VB.Net for a very short period before being totally disgusted by it
and moved on to C#; the points above are 3 things that, as a long-time VB
user, take a lot of getting used to. If I can get some time to elaborate on
them before you get comments from others I will.

 

[Erik Frey]

What would you like me to put about them? If you could suggest how the

questions and answers would be phrased, that would be very helpful - I
don't really know VB.NET myself, so any help on this subject would be
very useful. I've done the first few bits, but more input from VB.NET
users (or ex-users) would be great.

Null/nothing:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=c...ff=1&selm=OYP3F02hCHA.1760@tkmsftngp12&rnum=9

Me/MyBase/MyClass/base/this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...=1&[email protected]

AddressOf:
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&rnum=1

Escape Characters:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...41d86&seekm=#wV1RHRJBHA.596@tkmsftngp02#link1

Not the best links, but the questions all represents the kind of VB
questions I've seen here. The answers are pretty decent, too.

Erik

 

[Mattias Sjögren]

An excellent start Jon. Here are some suggested additions that come to
mind immediately

- How to call one constructor from another
- Why you can't combine 'const' and 'static'
- Difference between 'string' and 'String' (double/Double and so on)
- Difference between having an event and a delegate field
- Properties with different accessibility get/set



Mattias

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

An excellent start Jon. Here are some suggested additions that come to
mind immediately

- How to call one constructor from another

That's actually covered in a linked article already, but an explicit
question for it would be good, yes.

- Why you can't combine 'const' and 'static'
- Difference between 'string' and 'String' (double/Double and so on)
- Difference between having an event and a delegate field
- Properties with different accessibility get/set

Yup, those all sound good to include.

 

[Kieran Benton]

Hi Jon,

Great start btw, would like to suggest a few things:

Serial I/O:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/...mpleGuid=9dde5cf3-4842-4d4b-baa7-73e09c4d5890
OR
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/10/NETSerialComm/

Comparison With Java:
http://genamics.com/developer/csharp_comparative.htm

Let me know what you think.

Kieran

 

[Richard A. Lowe]

Great stuff!

I know some of these are common (apologies if others have suggested them)
but I'm not sure what heading some of them would go under: If you want
answers that you can just edit/correct, I'll be happy to provide...

- what's the difference between using cast syntax and the 'as' operator?
(C# as a language)
- how do I use an alias for a namespace or class? (C# as a language)
- why doesn't C# have checked exceptions? (C# as a language??)
- why are struct constructors in C# required to have at least one argument?
(C# as a language)
- how can I show an int as as string of 1's and 0's
- why does C# return an int when you add two bytes/shorts/sbytes/ushorts
together?
- how can I speed up P/Invoke calls made through C#? (I'm thinking of the
SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurityAttribute to avoid the stack walk here, but
maybe there are many more ways)
- why doesn't calling Initialize() on a reference-type array fill in the
array with objects?
- How can I implement a *global* hook in C#? (got the idea from the bottom
of here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318804)
- What are the benefits of strongly naming my assembly?
- How do I tell C# what kind of literal number I want? (f, L, U etc) (C# as
a language)
- What are static constructors for and how do they work?
- Why can't I overload methods on return type alone? (C# as a language)
- Why can't I put constants (or enums) in interfaces? (IIRC, this is
something you can do in Java?) (C# as a language)
- What operators can I overload in C#? (C# as a language)
- Why can't I overload the ___ operator (= seems to come up)? (C# as a
language)
- What's the difference between the ref and out modifiers on parameters? (C#
as a language)
- What's the difference in compiling with /checked+ and /checked-
- I have many VS.NET C# projects that I want to compile into a single
assembly. How can I do this?
- What free tools are available to help me develop with C#?
- What is the difference between the && and & and || and | operators on
boolean expressions?

Okay, I know some are very newb, but I think an FAQ is just for that
purpose.

I'll probably have more later

Richard

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Great start btw, would like to suggest a few things:

Serial I/O:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid
=9dde5cf3-4842-4d4b-baa7-73e09c4d5890
OR
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/10/NETSerialComm/

Comparison With Java:
http://genamics.com/developer/csharp_comparative.htm

Let me know what you think.

Sounds good to me - I'll do them ASAP.

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

I know some of these are common (apologies if others have suggested them)
but I'm not sure what heading some of them would go under: If you want
answers that you can just edit/correct, I'll be happy to provide...

Yup, answers would be great - especially given that you've provided a
wonderfully large selection of questions

Okay, I know some are very newb, but I think an FAQ is just for that
purpose.
Absolutely.

I'll probably have more later

Goodo.

 

[Joe Mayo [C# MVP]]

A while ago (too long ago) I agreed to start up a FAQ for this
newsgroup.

Today, I've finally got it into a sufficiently reasonable form that
it's worth putting up.

It's at http://www.pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/faq/

Please feel free to criticise, suggest more questions (preferrably with
answers!) etc. Also feel *more* than free to point people at it when
the FAQs are asked!

If people feel that it would be worth posting a link to the FAQ each
week or fortnight, I'd be happy to do that too.

Hi Jon,

This looks great and will be a very useful resource in the community.

Thanks!

Joe

 

[Alvin Bruney [MVP]]

This is excellent. Might I be able to add questions/suggestions to the
asp.net section?

 

[Richard A. Lowe]

Well, all I did was post some questions with (eventually) answers - and then
Jon, Mattias et al gave me feedback. The problem is finding the time to
incorporate ALL the feedback in my answers

In other words, go for it!

Richard

--
C#, .NET and Complex Adaptive Systems:
http://blogs.geekdojo.net/Richard

This is excellent. Might I be able to add questions/suggestions to the
asp.net section?

 

[Peter Seaman]

This is very helpful, many thanks.

I purchased the so-called "Learning Edition" of C# 2003 from Microsoft and
recommend it. It seems to get very little if any mention in these
newsgroups. The book that comes with it is called "Microsoft Visual C# .NET
Step by Step" by John Sharp and Jon Jagger and really does specify every
single step to create all sorts of projects. Because of VAT in this country
C# standard learning edition, including this useful 635 page book is
actually cheaper than C# Standard itself!

Peter Seaman