I’ve started giving some serious attention to the Tech Previews Microsoft put out for .NET 2.0 and VS 2005. I’ve mostly been using VC# Express: overall, I think it’s worthy of having around, even given the state it’s in. It’s like Snippet Compiler on steroids…and wolverine thyroid gland. If they’re retailing it for $20, I’d consider getting it.
There’s a lot I like about the new framework, and I know I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s in there. Lately, I’ve been playing with the new Uri classes, or trying to. The whole point of this post is to point out the complete lack of documentation for the new BCL classes. That’s not correct: there are plenty of articles on using the sparkly new features of the framework: generics, anonymous delegates, etc; but there are absolutely no examples for the new classes added to the BCL. For instance, UriFactory is a new abstract class that, from what I can tell in Reflector, can parse new uri schemes that come along, thus making Uri a little more future proof.. And yet: I have no idea how to use it. Seeing what the code does in Reflector doesn’t help me with how I’m supposed to use the class in my code.
I’ve found the MSDN docs to be pretty good about providing examples, at least a good starting point. But with these Tech Previews, it’s quite similar to an open source project. There is almost no documentation, so you have to stumble around and discover what you can on your own. Sometimes, that’s fun, but other times, like now, I just want to get on with it and do some work. Part of me likes the new, transparent Microsoft with their tech previews and their blogs (actually, all of me likes the blogs), but I have my doubts if it really helps anybody except consultants and writers and makes MS look good. With VS and Longhorn, all we’ve seen is, I’d say, MS more transparently push the dates back further and further.
Hopefully, with Beta 2 coming out in late January late March, the docs will be up to the quality we’re used to from Microsoft.