Introduction
Generics, advanced generics, and anonymous types in C# are powerful tools that help developers write flexible, reusable, and efficient code. Using generics enables improved performance while maintaining type safety.
Imagine you're managing a warehouse with various types of boxes. Each box contains different items, such as electronics, clothing, or fragile goods. To ensure everything is organized and handled efficiently, you need a system that can manage these diverse items safely and flexibly. You also want to sort and compare items across different categories without duplicating effort. Additionally, for quick summaries or reports, you need a way to group key details temporarily without creating detailed records for each item. By learning generics, advanced generics, and anonymous types in C#, you can create a system that is adaptable, efficient, and easy to maintain.
Learning objectives
- Implement generic classes and methods to handle various data types efficiently.
- Utilize advanced generics features like generic interfaces, covariance, contravariance, and generic math to address complex scenarios.
- Apply anonymous types to create temporary, lightweight data structures for short-term use.
- Explore use cases for anonymous types and tuples.
Prerequisites
- Visual Studio Code installed with the C# Dev Kit.
- Basic knowledge of the Visual Studio Code IDE.
- Basic understanding of the C# programming language.
- Familiar with classes, abstract classes, interfaces and inheritance.