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With the advent of VS2008, VB9.0 and C#3.0, the grace period for .NET 'developers' is now expired.

Those in the .NET development community that are NOT up to speed on Delegates, Generics, and generic Interfaces are at a serious disadvantage.

Why? Because .NET development has taken a serious change in direction-- AWAY from imperative, procedural "traditional" programming and TOWARDS declarative programming (LINQ) , functional programming (LINQ's delegates) , and yes, even meta-programming (LINQ's expression trees).

Legions of developers coding .NET today are missing the significance of what VS2008 actually represents. What it represents is a huge CHANGE in direction that is catching many casual .NET developers flat-footed.

By this time next year, there are two types of .NET developers: those that get it, and those that continue to use traditional approaches by using .NET at the 'surface' level.

If you want to learn more, you need not go any further than Anders Hejlsberg on LINQ and Functional Programming , the absolutely fantastic video where he talks about LINQ. This fellow is the mastermind behind C++, C# and now LINQ. Listen carefully, and he is telling us: THE GRACE PERIOD FOR .NET DEVELOPERS IS NOW OVER.

This video is 'required reading' for all .NET developers.

Now, when you first watch this thing, and you are new to LINQ, nothing he says may make much sense to you, since the whole LINQ idea is so huge and is based on so many huge concepts. But later after you learn some LINQ and watch it again, it dawns on you-- this is an ABSOLUTE SEA CHANGE in .NET development. So in practical terms, you really do need to understand Delegates, Generics, and generic interfaces. And that is just the beginning!

For example did you know that your interface can refer to another interface as part of it's definition?

Did you know that this interface that you refer to can be a generic interface?

Did you know that your interface can also be written generic?

Did you know that all of this is a foundational assumption of Language INtegrated Query?

Have you worked this deeply with interfaces yet?

If you have not, NOW is a good time to do so.

If you are looking for some exercises to help you understand this and other advanced .NET OOP concepts that are absolutely central to understanding LINQ, contact us. We'll send you to a web page on this site that walks you through some of the more important concepts.

We also offer online LINQ training that can get you where you need to be as fast as possible.

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