Richard Hale Shaw presented last night at the Vermont .NET User Group, "Moving Up to C# 3.0 and LINQ: What's In It For Me?" A perfect title for me since I didn't know what was in C# 3.0 and LINQ for me and now I know. Now I know.
Richard is one of the premiere .NET presenters who not only instructs but inspires you to move to a higher level as a developer. His presentations are always the highlight of New England Code Camp and if you're scheduled to speak the same time Richard is presenting, well, you're screwed. That, and any developers who attend your session instead of Richard's are obviously so clueless that you don't want to present to them anyway. "Dude, what are you DOING here???"
Two traits of Richard's presentation that I admire so much are how he takes control of the room and his overall mastery in the art of presentation. He supports and answers all questions but handles them so efficiently that he doesn't stray from the immediate point he's explaining. The second trait is his phenomenal grasp of not only .NET and its internals but of the English language. I like how that guy talks.
It was so impressive how Richard moved incrementally from the starting point of new C# 2.0 features, mainly Generics, the IEnumerable interface and anonymous methods, then to selected new features of C# 3.0 like lambda expressions and extension methods, and ultimately demonstrating how LINQ fit perfectly on top of that evolving structure. When Richard reached that climactic moment of melding LINQ with extensible static methods and C# Generic enumeration interfaces it was the intellectual equivalent of the bomb exploding right outside of the dome, shattering the veil and freeing the citizens of Springfield in The Simpsons Movie.
Yes, it was quite a night in Vermont Nerd History. As always, big thanks to Julie Lerman, our fearless .NET User Group Leader, for making it happen.