What features are people looking forward to in .Net 4.0 - 4.1

Question

I am very interested in learning what features people are interested in in the forthcoming .net framework(s)?

Whether these be new classes or new controls I am curio

Answer 1

Mostly parallel extensions and 'variance. And of course: System.Reactive / the Rx Framework / "LINQ to Events", which I think could be(come) very big.

But there are other things I have not seen mentioned here that - while "just nice to have" in a way - might come in handy when the new version is finally there. Like:

• BigInteger (to bad something like a INumber didn't make it in yet...)
• ISet<T> and SortedSet<T> (self-balancing trees in the Framework)
• Changing file system enumeration APIs from returning arrays (only?) to returning IEnumerable (as well?)
• Default support for F# language
• Slight compression improvements

I think dynamic and optional/named parameters are just there to enable better/easier interop with languages that use/need/require these concepts. So they are nice to have available. But surely nothing more than that.

Answer 2

The Visual Studio 2010 code editor being pure WPF and being able to be docked on either monitor, and addins not using the nasty Office COM object model (EnvDTE).

I know that's not the framework but the question has been tagged VS2010

Answer 3

I do a lot of work with Expression, so I'm looking forward to the extra expression types.

I also like optional/named arguments - but mainly as a way of making immutability simpler; not sure I'd use it much otherwise...

Answer 4

For me, the most important is the convergence between VB.NET and C#, now they share finally the same features that were broken with 3.0/3.5.

I am also interested in:

• The new Tuple type
• Covariance and contravariance

Answer 5

Ummm... Isn't the StringOr class an April Fools joke?