C# in Depth, Third Edition

Part 4. C# 4: Playing nicely with others

C# 4 is a funny beast. It doesn’t have the “several, almost unrelated, major new features” feeling of C# 2, nor the “all in the cause of LINQ” feeling of C# 3. Instead, the new features of C# 4 fall somewhere between the two. Interoperability is a major theme, but many of the features are equally useful even if you never need to work with other environments.

My personal favorite features from C# 4 are optional parameters and named arguments. They’re relatively simple but can be put to good use in many places, improving the readability of code and generally making life more pleasant. Do you waste time working out which argument means what? Put some names on them. Are you tired of writing endless overloads ...