My Favorite New Language Feature in C# 6.0 and Visual Basic 14
Both Visual Basic 14 and C# 6.0, developers get the NameOf operator/keyword. It doesn't do much: It returns the name of the variable or member passed to it. This means I can write properties that integrate with the INotifyPropertyChanged event with code like this:
Public Property CompanyName() As String
Get
Return Me.companyNameValue
End Get
Set
Me.companyNameValue = value
NotifyPropertyChanged(NameOf(CompanyName))
End Set
End Property
This isn't going to make my applications run faster or anything useful like that. But it's going to eliminate a whole bunch of hardcoded strings in my applications that included the name of some program element. Now, instead of a string whose content the compiler couldn't validate, I can use NameOf and let the compiler check the parameter I pass.
Posted by Peter Vogel on 05/13/2015