TWIL vol.1 (.NET 7, abstraction, ChatGPT meet SO)

As developers, we're always reading and learning, doing and failing, trying again and succeeding. There's always something to share, but some of those somethings are pretty small. For the things that aren't enough to fill a whole post, here's a maybe-weekly "junk drawer" style post. (Not that it's junk, I hope!)

What's new in .NET 6 / .NET 7?

The .NET 7 edition of Code Magazine arrived in the mail recently, full of the newest additions in C# 11, and I finally got around to reading it.  Then that reminded me that I still had the .NET 6 edition from last year on my shelf, so I got around to reading that too. Better late than never.

Issue: 2022 - Vol. 19 - Issue 1 - .NET 7.0 | CODE Magazine

As Microsoft launches .NET 7, CODE Focus offers high quality insights right from the teams responsible for designing and improving the product. Dig into...

CODE MagazineRod Paddock

Issue: 2021 - Vol. 18 - Issue 1 - .NET 6.0 | CODE Magazine

Welcome to our CODE FOCUS issue for .NET 6. The .NET Team calls this the Unified .NET 6 release. It’s all one development environment with a cross-platf...

CODE MagazineRod Paddock

I found the articles on "The Unified .NET 6" and "Minimal APIs" to be the most interesting, but there was a lot of good stuff in both of them. If you want to learn more about what's new in C# 10/11 (corresponds to .NET 6/7), start here:

What’s new in C# 10 - C# Guide

Get an overview of the new features available in C# 10.

Microsoft LearnBillWagner

What’s new in C# 11 - C# Guide

Get an overview of the new features coming in C# 11.

Microsoft LearnBillWagner

I'm always forgetting which .NET version lines up with which C# version (Microsoft's naming conventions don't help), so I keep the C# language versioning page bookmarked. And if you're interested in all the features we've gotten over the years, there's The history of C# (look ma, I'm a contributor).

Abstraction is a beautiful thing

While I was reading up on all that new .NET goodness, I stumbled on this article by Stephen Toub. I appreciate all the hard work put into .NET 6 to make strings work in the most effecient way possible. But you know what I appreciate even more? That it just happens... and I don't have to think about it!

String Interpolation in C# 10 and .NET 6

Learn about String Interpolation in C# 10 and .NET 6

.NET BlogStephen Toub - MSFT

The level of technical detail in here is staggering, as well as all the good questions and answers in the comments too.

For anyone who goes cross-eyed at stuff like this, there's a certain level of detail we need to know about (we hide unnecessary detail from users and even other developers all the time), but it's okay at some point to just accept the way things are and move on with your day.

Automated programming answers

Anyone visiting stackoverflow this week would've seen a banner across the top of every single page notifying everyone that they've banned ChatGPT answers. SO contributors are getting riled about it, but what is it?

I hadn't heard of GPT before this, but the following article cleared a lot up.

ChatGPT: Why Everyone Is Obsessed This Mind-Blowing AI Chatbot

This artificial intelligence bot can chat and write essays, poems and computer programs. Careful how much you trust it, though.

CNETStephen Shankland

It's an advanced tool that's scooping up information from around the web to create authoritative sounding answers, without asking for consent or attributing sources. The answers sound really good even when they're wrong, so I guess it's poorly produced plagiarism?

That's it for now.. have a great week! 🙂