PDC – Final Day – Microsoft .NET Framework : CLR Futures

Joshua Goodman gave this talk and he did it in a humorous way. The overview he gave was a good one, and just about all the new .NET features he described were very interesting.

So what is new?

The .NET 2.0 and 4.0 CLR’s can now run in the same process:

Using an old Native application within a .NET environment will become less of a hassle:

We will get a new type, the BigInteger:

We will get Tuples (like in functional languages), and these tuples can be used in C# in a very convenient way:

Also, garbage collection is improved in .NET 4.0:

This is on the client side:

Watch the new background compilation, this improves performance of your apps, because Gen0 and Gen1 collection can be simultaneously done with Gen2 collection.

On the server side, garbage collection is also improved. When you’re on a web farm behind a load balancer, you will be able to subscribe to an event that Gen2 collection is going to take place. You can then notify the load balancer to stop sending requests to you, let the gen2 collection finish, and then notify the load balancer to start sending the requests again.

Also new are corrupted state exceptions:

This means certain exceptions cannot be caught any more (overridable with a switch)

Also new and very interesting are the Code Contracts:

So how does this work?

The Requires will be called when entering the method. The Ensures will get called after processing the method. So you can define entry and exit rules within your method! You can even get a parameter “rolled back” when an exceptions occurs (see the last EnsuresOnThrow rule)!