This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Sam Gentile. Original Post: Grand Slam Out of the Park with Hardcore .NET Feed Title: Sam Gentile's Blog Feed URL: http://samgentile.com/blog/Rss.aspx Feed Description: .NET and Software Development from an experienced perspective - .NET/CLR, Rotor, Interop, MC+/C++, COM+, ES, Mac OS X, Extreme Programming and More! Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Sam Gentile Latest Posts From Sam Gentile's Blog

I just did my Hardcore .NET talk here at DevTeach at 8AM in the morning. I fully expected an attendance like 8 at my Advanced COM Interop because who wants to see CLR Internals at 8AM? Well, not only was the room filled to capacity but they got extra chairs three times! There was like 60 people jammed in! The focus of this talk has changed drastically from abstract concepts of the CLR and Rotor to a sharp focus on real stuff you can use today: how to avoid Boxing/Unboxing using Immutable Interfaces and techniques like the following. This next line of code that we use a million times a day causes three boxing operations:

// Whidbey does this too!

Console.WriteLine("Three ints: {0}, {1}, {2}", 42, 2, 7);

The following avoids them:

// Integers never implicitly converted System.Object

Console.WriteLine("Three ints: {0}, {1}, {2}", 42.ToString(), 2.ToString(), 7.ToString());

Look at the IL yourself. Anyhow, I also do: In this session, we will dive deep into the CLR in areas like Value vs. Reference Types, Garbage Collection, and more but in a way that focuses on how you can write your code more effectively. Examples of code developed will include avoiding boxing penalties, Whidbey Generics, Implementing IDisposable and Finalizers and more. This is an expert level session designed to take your .NET experience deeper and to become more effective.

So far, all 10 out of 10 scores and I am closing in on Ted Neward on the #4 place in the Top Ten-)

Also really fun was the Architecture Panel I was on last night with Beth Massi, Mario Cardinal, Barry Gervin, Ted Neward and hosted by the one and only Nick Landry. I went to to dinner with Beth and Nick before and Nick showed us a Montreal specialty, smoked meat, which was incredible! Think like corned beef but with 17 spices. Beth is a lot of fun and charged with energy and I am glad that Beth and Nick are new friends of mine. I also got to spend another 2 hours or so of quality time with Steve Swartz who changed some of my “SOA” thinking that I will write about soon. Right now, I am being entertained by the one and only Carl Franklin who is playing Guitar next to me like Hot Tuna tunes. He's real good too.