hi
VS 2008 provides some great syntactic sugar over the previous C# version. In fact because there is not a new runtime technically all of the new language features are syntactic sugar including the LINQ syntax. However the new language features are very powerful, expressive, and are probably the biggest change out of all the changes that were made.
Here are some of the new language features that Scott Gu has blogged about:
- Automatic Properties: provides a default implement of get and set
- Object Initializers: almost like having methods with named parameters
- Collection Initilizers: save keystrokes by avoiding multiple Add statements
- Extension Methods: add new methods to any class without inheritance
- Lambda Expressions: very compact, functional programming syntax
- Anonymous Types: introduces the strongly typed "var" keyword (think JavaScript)
Congratulations to the Microsoft Visual Studio team on a job well done!!! I guess I'll get to congratulate you again when it officially launches in February