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

April 26, 2012 Apr 26, 2012 04/26/12
Stephen Toub - MSFT
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...

Async/Await FAQ

April 12, 2012 Apr 12, 2012 04/12/12
Stephen Toub - MSFT
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?

April 12, 2012 Apr 12, 2012 04/12/12
Stephen Toub - MSFT
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

April 6, 2012 Apr 6, 2012 04/6/12
Stephen Toub - MSFT
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 ...

Do I need to dispose of Tasks?

March 25, 2012 Mar 25, 2012 03/25/12
Stephen Toub - MSFT
I get this question a lot: “Task implements IDisposable and exposes a Dispose method.  Does that mean I should dispose of all of my tasks?” SummaryHere’s my short answer to this question: “No.  Don’t bother disposing of your tasks.”Here’s my medium-length answer: “No.  Don&...

Is it ok to use nested Parallel.For loops?

March 14, 2012 Mar 14, 2012 03/14/12
Stephen Toub - MSFT
Every now and then, I get this question: “is it ok to use nested Parallel.For loops?” The short answer is “yes.”  As is often the case, the longer answer is, well, longer. Typically when folks ask this question, they’re concerned about one of two things.  First, they’re concerned that each nested loop will assume it “...

Are you using TPL Dataflow? We’d love to know!

March 6, 2012 Mar 6, 2012 03/6/12
Stephen Toub - MSFT
Are you using the new System.Threading.Tasks.Dataflow.dll library, either from its CTPs or from the .NET 4.5 Developer Preview or Beta?  We'd love to hear about it, and if you have time, what your experiences have been (good or bad).  What kind of solution are you building, and how are you using TPL Dataflow in it?  Has the ...