Concepts behind the C# 3 language

Short Description
The C# 3 (currently available in preliminary version) is part of the LINQ project [1]. The aim of this project is to integrate better support for working with data into main stream general purpose programming languages developed at Microsoft targeting the .NET platform* (C# and VB.Net).

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Content
F# is language based on ML, which is an impure functional language (in fact, it is based on language called OCaml that adds several features to the standard ML). Functional languages are very different from imperative languages (most of the widely used languages like C++, Java and C# are imperative). The biggest contribution of F# is that it shows how functional languages can be compiled for the .NET runtime (CLR), because .NET CLR was initially designed for executing code written in imperative languages. Another aim of F# is the interoperability with other languages targeting the .NET platform. Part of the F# related research is also the ILX [6] project that shows how .NET runtime could be extended to provide better support for functional languages (like first-class functions).
Functional programming in general were big inspiration for some of the C# 3 features and the F# research language already showed how these features can be implemented for the .NET platform. C# 3 includes constructs that were inspired by type inference (ability to deduce the type of expression), tuples (data types that represent pair of values), first class functions (ability to take function as a parameter and return it as a result), lazy evaluation (ability to evaluate expression only when it is later needed) and meta-programming (ability to manipulate with program source code).
Most of these features that were added to C# 3 are very limited when compared with their implementation in F# and other functional languages, but it is very interesting to see how functional concepts are becoming more and more important and can benefit to the non-functional languages.
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