Inception	2001
Proprietor	Microsoft
Paradigm	Multiple but mainly imperative with features of functional
Latest Release	3.0
Closest to	Java

 

Characteristics (similar to Java)

• strongly typed
• single inheritance
• automated memory management (including GC)
• attention to distributed applications, portability, and internationalization
• pointers (as in C) can be used in unsafe blocks
• many compilers use JIT compilation
• supports auto-boxing
• implements a Common Type System where even primitives inherit from System.Object

 

Differences from Java

• some keyword differences like using instead of import and foreach (string s in my_string) instead of for (String s : myString), etc
• partial classes; implementation spread across classes with the same name for code auto-generation purposes and modularization
  public partial class MyClass { ... }
• difference in parameterized type; the parametric polymorphism is cross-language
• generators
  yield return X;    

  public IEnumerable GetEven(IEnumerable numbers) {
     foreach (int i in numbers) {
          if (i % 2 == 0) yield return i;
     }
}


• static classes are ones that cannot be instantiated or inherited from; contain only static members
• member properties
  string status = string.Empty;
public string Status {
     get           { return status; }
     protected set { status = value; }
}
• nullable vs. non-nullable types (even for primitives) for 1-1 correspondence with SQL data types
  int? i = null;
• ?? is the null-coalescing operator; it returns the left argument if not null, the right otherwise
  return o ?? new Object();
• LINQ is a SQL-like internal query language for operation on collections (as well as XML documents, etc)
int[] array = {1, 5, 2, 10, 7};
// Select squares of all odd numbers in the array sorted in descending order
IEnumerable query = from x in array
                    where x % 2 == 1
                    orderby x descending
                    select x * x;
// Result: 49, 25, 1

• fast member initialization
  Customer c = new Customer(); c.Name = "James";
Customer c = new Customer { Name="James" };
• dynamic member assignment
  public static class StringExtensions {
     public static string Left(this string s, int n) {
          return s.Substring(0, n);
     }
  }
  string s = "foo";
s.Left(3);