.NET Parallel Programming

All about Async/Await, System.Threading.Tasks, System.Collections.Concurrent, System.Linq, and more…

October 2011 - .NET Parallel Programming

When at last you await

October 24, 2011 Oct 24, 2011 10/24/11
Stephen Toub - MSFT
When you start using async methods heavily, you’ll likely see a particular pattern of composition pop up from time to time.  Its structure is typically either of the form: async Task FooAsync() {     … // some initialization code without awaits      await BarAsync(&hellip...

Task.Run vs Task.Factory.StartNew

October 24, 2011 Oct 24, 2011 10/24/11
Stephen Toub - MSFT
In .NET 4, Task.Factory.StartNew was the primary method for scheduling a new task.  Many overloads provided for a highly configurable mechanism, enabling setting options, passing in arbitrary state, enabling cancellation, and even controlling scheduling behaviors.  The flip side of all of this power is complexity.  You need to ...

New articles on async/await in MSDN Magazine

October 3, 2011 Oct 3, 2011 10/3/11
Stephen Toub - MSFT
The October 2011 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online.  In it, you can find three articles about the new async/await features of C# and Visual Basic.  While the articles can stand alone, they were written with each other in mind in order to provide a 1-2-3 on-ramp into the world of asynchronous programming with these new ...

Keeping Async Methods Alive

October 2, 2011 Oct 2, 2011 10/2/11
Stephen Toub - MSFT
Consider a type that will print out a message when it’s finalized, and that has a Dispose method which will suppress finalization: class DisplayOnFinalize : IDisposable {     public void Dispose() { GC.SuppressFinalize(this); }     ~DisplayOnFinalize() { Console.WriteLine(“Finalized”); } } Now ...

Don’t Forget To Complete Your Tasks

October 2, 2011 Oct 2, 2011 10/2/11
Stephen Toub - MSFT
“Don’t forget to complete your tasks.”  That guidance may sound trivial and silly, but I recently saw it as a source of a bug in software written by some very smart folks, and thus thought this would be a good opportunity to remind folks of the imperative.Tasks represent a promise.  If you hand one out, someone else...