The C# language specification has importance. It can be used to improve your understanding of the language. For mastery of a subject, you can read the source material that actually defines the language with all its complexity. Few programmers have comprehensive knowledge of the specification itself.
This page reviews the C# language specification published by Microsoft Press.
First, the C# language is promoted by a very large company, and Microsoft has sought acceptance of the language by all of its developers. To further this goal, precise language specifications and detailed technical documents have been published; this is lacking in many other programming languages.
For the C# language, there is a book called The C# Programming Language that is published by Addison-Wesley and Microsoft and it is the definitive language reference, fit for compiler developers.
Let's explore how useful the annotated C# specification is for understanding the language. The specification is a poor tutorial and is not ordered well for easy reading or understandability. It does not take you from the simple to the complex, and it does not describe useful programs. However, it gives you a glimpse into the practical theories and vision of the language creators. It is not useful for beginners. Instead, it helps define the difference between proficiency and mastery.
I have read each word in the 784-page annotated C# specification, and this took me about six months to accomplish. The book is at times baffling, and some concepts are still opaque to me. However, this book erased my doubts about the language itself, and I rarely need to consult references about the language mechanics.
Tip: Many resources on the Internet about the C# language are wrong.
After reading the complete language specification, you may come to understand the compromises and motivations behind it. And while this knowledge is of limited use, it can help you understand the project as a whole in a more complex way. For example, the language specification describes interfaces and derived classes in terms of transitive closure; this mathematical concept underlies object-oriented programming.
The specification details the type inference algorithms used, and their weaknesses. The specification describes generic types in terms of constructed and open types, providing insight into template-based concepts.
Note: In short, while the specification won't help you write better programs, it will enhance your understanding of programming in general and provide context for the features in object-oriented programming.
The annotated C# language specification contains very few jokes, but my favorite is that the index contains an entry for Bugs. If you look up Bugs in the specification, you will read: "See unsafe code." This carries the implication that unsafe code is full of bugs, which is probably only funny if you are really bored.
Note: The C# specification is not above including silly jokes.
If you have not read the entire language specification, you are probably unaware of lots of weird ambiguities and interpretations in the language. The specification tells you the exact parsing rules for determining whether a generic type such as G<A,B> is instead two arguments in a function call. It shows how generic types with constraints can derive from other constrained interfaces. This knowledge is truly obscure, and of no use in programming.
Here, I issue a challenge to all programmers aiming at mastery. To attain the understanding that is at the very top of a subject, do not read the writing of experts. Instead, read the same material that those experts read. For core understanding of the language itself, the C# specification is far superior to all derivative writings, including Dot Net Perls.
We looked at the book, The C# Programming Language, which defines the standard for this programming language. Unlike other disciplines, the C# language is sharply defined by a set of algorithmic rules; the language itself is an algorithm, and compiler theory also underlies this subject.
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