I’ve been watching some of the PDC 2008 videos online. One of the highlights is The Future of C# by Anders Hejlsberg, and I highly recommend it to anyone that’s interested in .NET. Most of the session focuses on the dynamic capabilities that are coming to C# 4.0. The .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) was built primarily with static typing (aka “strong typing”) in mind, in which every variable must be explicitly declared and assigned a type (string, integer, etc.). Microsoft recently built the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) to support dynamic (non-static) languages, such as Python and Ruby, and they are using the DLR to bring some dynamic features to C#.
To you strong-typing zealots, there’s no need to be alarmed. C# is not transforming itself from a static to a dynamic language. There is a gap between static and dynamic languages, and the focus is on closing that gap and improving the interaction. It just so happens that FoxPro is a dynamic language…
To illustrate the problem, here is a simple VFP class I wrote that finds a customer and creates an object for the customer using Scatter:
Define Class Customers As Session OlePublic oCustomer = NULL Procedure GetCustomer(lcCustomerID As String) Local loCustomer If !Used("Customers") Select 0 Use (Home(2) + "Northwind\Customers") Else Select Customers EndIf Locate For CustomerID = lcCustomerID Scatter Name This.oCustomer Memo EndProc Procedure Destroy Use In Select("Customers") Endproc Enddefine
I compiled the class into a COM DLL and imported it into my C# project. (For more on that, see Rick Strahl’s article: .NET Interop for VFP Applications.) Since This.oCustomer is created dynamically at runtime, FoxPro cannot include it in the type library. Therefore, to access any properties of the oCustomer in C#, you have to use “reflection”. Here’s the C# code:
string CustomerID = "ALFKI"; netcomtest.Customers oCustomers = new netcomtest.Customers(); oCustomers.GetCustomer(CustomerID); object oCust = oCustomers.OCUSTOMER; //use reflection to access object properties object CompanyName = oCust.GetType().InvokeMember("COMPANYNAME", BindingFlags.GetProperty, null, oCust, null); object ContactName = oCust.GetType().InvokeMember("CONTACTNAME", BindingFlags.GetProperty, null, oCust, null); //display company and contact name MessageBox.Show(CompanyName.ToString() + ContactName.ToString());
What a mess! If I wanted to access all of the properties on the object, this would get very tedious. C# 4.0 makes the process easier by introducing a new “dynamic” type. This tells C# to resolve the type of the variable at runtime (just like Fox would), rather than at compile time. If I understand Anders correctly, here’s what the new code should look like :
string CustomerID = "ALFKI"; netcomtest.Customers oCustomers = new netcomtest.Customers(); oCustomers.GetCustomer(CustomerID); //create dynamic reference to object dynamic oCust = oCustomers.OCUSTOMER; //display company and contact name MessageBox.Show(oCust.CompanyName + oCust.ContactName);
Now, isn’t that better? I can actually understand this code. I can access all the properties of oCust directly, just like I would in FoxPro. It’s nice to see that COM Interop is one of the things that Microsoft is still improving.
Anders also showed some things they are working on beyond C# 4.0. Fast forward to the 60 minute mark in the video to see the cutting-edge stuff they are working on. In short, they are rewriting the compiler, so they can do stuff like put code into a string variable and evaluate/execute it at runtime. Fantastic! Anders took it a step further and showed C# commands being executed as he entered them into a window. Unbelievable! It’s amazing what they can do these days! Seriously, should you find yourself working with C# in the future, it will be nice to have some capabilities we’ve grown to love in VFP.
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