New Features of both languages in 2005 version (VB and C#)

VB.NET

Visual Basic 2005 has many new and improved language features -- such as inheritance, interfaces, overriding, shared members, and overloading -- that make it a powerful object-oriented programming language. As a Visual Basic developer, you can now create multithreaded, scalable applications using explicit multithreading. This language has following new features,

1. Continue Statement, which immediately skips to the next iteration of a Do, For, or While loop.
2. IsNot operator, which you can avoid using the Not and Is operators in an awkward order.
3. 3. Using...End. Using statement block ensures disposal of a system resource when your code leaves the block for any reason.

Public Sub setbigbold( _
ByVal c As Control)
Using nf As New _
System.Drawing.Font("Arial",_
12.0F, FontStyle.Bold)
c.Font = nf
c.Text = "This is" &_
"12-point Arial bold"
End Using
End Sub

4. Explicit Zero Lower Bound on an Array, Visual Basic now permits an array declaration to specify the lower bound (0) of each dimension along with the upper bound.
5. Unsigned Types, Visual Basic now supports unsigned integer data types (UShort, UInteger, and ULong) as well as the signed type SByte.
6. Operator Overloading, Visual Basic now allows you to define a standard operator (such as +, &, Not, or Mod) on a class or structure you have defined.
7. Partial Types, to separate generated code from your authored code into separate source files.
8. Visual Basic now supports type parameters on generic classes, structures, interfaces, procedures, and delegates. A corresponding type argument specifies at compilation time the data type of one of the elements in the generic type.
9. Custom Events. You can declare custom events by using the Custom keyword as a modifier for the Event statement. In a custom event, you specify exactly what happens when code adds or removes an event handler to or from the event, or when code raises the event.
10. Compiler Checking Options, The /nowarn and /warnaserror options provide more control over how warnings are handled. Each one of these compiler options now takes a list of warning IDs as an optional parameter, to specify to which warnings the option applies.
11. There are eight new command-line compiler options:

• 1. The /codepage option specifies which codepage to use when opening source files.
• 2. The /doc option generates an XML documentation file based on comments within your code.
• 3. The /errorreport option provides a convenient way to report a Visual Basic internal compiler error to Microsoft.
• 4. The /filealign option specifies the size of sections in your output file.
• 5. The /noconfig option causes the compiler to ignore the Vbc.rsp file.
• 6. The /nostdlib option prevents the import of mscorlib.dll, which defines the entire System namespace.
• 7. The /platform option specifies the processor to be targeted by the output file, in those situations where it is necessary to explicitly specify it.
• 8. The /unify option suppresses warnings resulting from a mismatch between the versions of directly and indirectly referenced assemblies

C#

With the release of Visual Studio 2005, the C# language has been updated to version 2.0. This language has following new features:

1. Generics types are added to the language to enable programmers to achieve a high level of code reuse and enhanced performance for collection classes. Generic types can differ only by arity. Parameters can also be forced to be specific types.
2. Iterators make it easier to dictate how a for each loop will iterate over a collection's contents.

// Iterator Example

public class NumChar
{
string[] saNum = {
"One", "Two", "Three",
"Four", "Five", "Six",
"Seven", "Eight", "Nine",
"Zero"};
public
System.Collections.IEnumerator
GetEnumerator()
{
foreach (string num in saNum)
yield return num;
}
}
// Create an instance of

// the collection class

NumChar oNumChar = new NumChar();
// Iterate through it with foreach

foreach (string num in oNumChar)
Console.WriteLine(num);

3. Partial type definitions allow a single type, such as a class, to be split into multiple files. The Visual Studio designer uses this feature to separate its generated code from user code.
4. Nullable types allow a variable to contain a value that is undefined.
5. Anonymous Method is now possible to pass a block of code as a parameter. Anywhere a delegate is expected, a code block can be used instead: There is no need to define a new method.

button1.Click +=
delegate { MessageBox.Show(
"Click!") };

6. . The namespace alias qualifier (::) provides more control over accessing namespace members. The global :: alias allows to access the root namespace that may be hidden by an entity in your code.
7. Static classes are a safe and convenient way of declaring a class containing static methods that cannot be instantiated. In C# v1.2 you would have defined the class constructor as private to prevent the class being instantiated.
8. 8. There are eight new compiler options:

• 1. /langversion option: Can be used to specify compatibility with a specific version of the language.
• 2. /platform option: Enables you to target IPF (IA64 or Itanium) and AMD64 architectures.
• 3. #pragma warning: Used to disable and enable individual warnings in code.
• 4. /linkresource option: Contains additional options.
• 5. /errorreport option: Can be used to report internal compiler errors to Microsoft over the Internet.
• 6. /keycontainer and /keyfile: Support specifying cryptographic keys.