Foreword

Ten years is a long stretch of time for a human, and it’s an absolute eternity for a technical book aimed at professional programmers. It was with some astonishment, then, that I realized 10 years have passed since Microsoft shipped C# 3.0 with Visual Studio 2008 and since I read the drafts of the first edition of this book. It has also been 10 years since Jon joined Stack Overflow and quickly became the user with the highest reputation.

C# was already a large, complex language in 2008, and the design and implementation teams haven’t been idle for the last decade. I’m thrilled with how C# has been innovative in meeting the needs of many different developer constituencies, from video games to websites to low-level, highly robust system components. C# takes the best from academic research and marries it to practical techniques for solving real problems. It’s not dogmatic; the C# designers don’t ask “What’s the most object-oriented way to design this feature?” or “What’s the most functional way to design this feature?” but rather “What’s the most pragmatic, safe, and effective way to design this feature?” Jon gets all of that. He doesn’t just explain how the language works; he explains how the whole thing holds together as a unified design and also points out when it doesn’t.

I said in my foreword to the first edition that Jon is enthusiastic, knowledgeable, talented, curious, analytical, and a great teacher, and all of that is still true. Let me add to that list by noting his perseverance and dedication. Writing a book is a huge job, particularly when you do it in your spare time. Going back and revising that book to keep it fresh and current is just as much work, and this is the third time Jon has done that with this book. A lesser author would be content to tweak it here and there or add a chapter about new materials; this is more like a large-scale refactoring. The results speak for themselves.

More than ever, I can’t wait to find out what great things the next generation of programmers will do with C# as it continues to evolve and grow. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have over the years, and thanks for choosing to compose your programs in C#.

ERIC LIPPERT SOFTWARE ENGINEER FACEBOOK