April 2012 | .NET Parallel Programming

Async Targeting Pack for Visual Studio 11 now available for .NET 4 and Silverlight 5

Stephen Toub - MSFTApril 26, 2012Apr 26, 201204/26/12

We’re happy to announce that you can now download an Async Targeting Pack for Visual Studio 11 that lets you target .NET 4 and Silverlight 5. The included DLLs address the previously discussed issue of the Visual Studio 11 Beta compilers being incompatible with the AsyncCtpLibrary* DLLs from the Async CTP; with this targeting pack...

Using await with WinRT async operations

Stephen Toub - MSFTApril 24, 2012Apr 24, 201204/24/12

Over on the Windows 8 app developer blog, I've written a blog post about using await with WinRT. I hope you enjoy it...

Should I expose synchronous wrappers for asynchronous methods?

Stephen Toub - MSFTApril 13, 2012Apr 13, 201204/13/12

In a previous post Should I expose asynchronous wrappers for synchronous methods?, I discussed “async over sync,” the notion of using synchronous functionality asynchronously and the benefits that doing so may or may not yield. The other direction of “sync over async” is also interesting to explore. Avoid Exposing ...

Async/Await FAQ

Stephen Toub - MSFTApril 12, 2012Apr 12, 201204/12/12

From time to time, I receive questions from developers which highlight either a need for more information about the new “async” and “await” keywords in C# and Visual Basic. I’ve been cataloguing these questions, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to share my answers to them.Conceptual OverviewWhere can ...

Are deadlocks still possible with await?

Stephen Toub - MSFTApril 12, 2012Apr 12, 201204/12/12

Developers familiar with parallel programming are also familiar with a wide range of potential problems that can occur when practicing the art. One of the most well-known issues is “deadlock,” where two or more operations are waiting on each other to complete in a manner such that none of them will be able to complete.I&rsquo...

Overriding Stream Asynchrony

Stephen Toub - MSFTApril 6, 2012Apr 6, 201204/6/12

In .NET 4.5 Beta, the Stream class provides multiple virtual methods related to reading and writing: As a developer deriving from Stream, it’s helpful to understand what the base implementations do and when you can and should override them.Read, Write, FlushThe Read, Write, and Flush methods are the core synchronous ...

.NET Parallel Programming