CLR via C# will NOT be updated for .NET 3.5

I get a lot of e-mails asking me if I will be updating my CLR via C# book for .NET 3.5. This blog entry will asnwer this question.

Here is the short answer: NO, I am not updating the book.

Here is the long answer: My CLR via C# book was last updated for .NET 2.0 and I have no intention of updating the book for .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5. The reason is because my book is really about the CLR and .NET 3.0 and 3.5 still run on top of CLR 2.0.

.NET 3.0 and 3.5 is really CLR 2.0 plus some new DLLs that contain new class libraries for WPF, WCF, WF, Addin support and Linq support. My book has never covered any ancillary class libraries; it has always focused on the CLR itself and the small subset of class library types that talk directly to the runtime engine.

In addition, .NET 3.0 shipped with C# 2.0 and so no changes were made to the C# language/compiler either. Of course, .NET 3.5 does ship with C# 3.0 which does offer many new features (automatically-implemented properties, implicitly typed local variables, extension methods, lambda expressions, object initializers, anonymous types, implicitly typed arrays, partial methods, query expressions, and expression tress). However, all of these features are just compiler syntactic sugar to make syntax easier for programmers. Many of these features are very simple to understand and grasp so I feel that it is not worth updating my book just to cover the new syntax offered by C# to accomplish things you already could do.

While many of the C# 3.0 features are needed to fully leverage the various set of LINQ technologies (Linq to Object, Linq to XML, Linq to Sql, Linq to DataSet, and Linq to Entities). And, while I will address the new C# language features in some future edition of my book (to coincide with the release of a new CLR version), I will never cover LINQ itself; just the architecture that makes LINQ possible.

Also, I just recently completed updating my Windows book (Windows via C/C++, 5th Edition, Microsoft Press) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

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