.net – What are the benefits of upgrading from .NET 2.0 to .NET 3.5

net

I need some help. My supervisor who is not a programmer asked me to prepare a document describing how our company would benefit from switching to .NET 3.5 from .NET 2.0. We're a small company and our IT department consists of only 6 programmers. We write mainly Windows Forms, sometimes ASP.NET and Compact Framework apps. I would like to hear about pros and cons of this decision.

Edit:

I personally know .NET 3.5 I'm just not sure how to convince my supervisor that we need it.

Edit2:

Please note that my supervisor is NOT a programmer (which is a really stupid situation but it's another story) so simply telling him that .NET 3.5 has LINQ and other stuff tells him nothing.

Best Answer

I know it's hard to quantify in business terms, but... LINQ/lambda expressions!

Also: you can take advantage of higher-level APIs like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (I think you get the idea on the acronyms). VS2008 is a lot nicer to use for the ASP.Net stuff, as well (sell that as higher productivity. I haven't done enough windows forms work in vs2008 to give any advice there).

This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

It appears that the guidance in this area may have changed, as StyleCop now enforces the use of the C# specific aliases.

C# – the difference between const and readonly in C#

Apart from the apparent difference of

having to declare the value at the time of a definition for a const VS readonly values can be computed dynamically but need to be assigned before the constructor exits.. after that it is frozen.
const's are implicitly static. You use a ClassName.ConstantName notation to access them.

There is a subtle difference. Consider a class defined in AssemblyA.

public class Const_V_Readonly
{
  public const int I_CONST_VALUE = 2;
  public readonly int I_RO_VALUE;
  public Const_V_Readonly()
  {
     I_RO_VALUE = 3;
  }
}

AssemblyB references AssemblyA and uses these values in code. When this is compiled:

in the case of the const value, it is like a find-replace. The value 2 is 'baked into' the AssemblyB's IL. This means that if tomorrow I update I_CONST_VALUE to 20, AssemblyB would still have 2 till I recompile it.
in the case of the readonly value, it is like a ref to a memory location. The value is not baked into AssemblyB's IL. This means that if the memory location is updated, AssemblyB gets the new value without recompilation. So if I_RO_VALUE is updated to 30, you only need to build AssemblyA and all clients do not need to be recompiled.

So if you are confident that the value of the constant won't change, use a const.

public const int CM_IN_A_METER = 100;

But if you have a constant that may change (e.g. w.r.t. precision).. or when in doubt, use a readonly.

public readonly float PI = 3.14;

Update: Aku needs to get a mention because he pointed this out first. Also I need to plug where I learned this: Effective C# - Bill Wagner

Edit:

Edit2:

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – the difference between String and string in C#

This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

C# – the difference between const and readonly in C#

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