Knowing .NET

Just back from Kailua-Kona and the ECMA Working Groups on the standardization of C# and C++/CLI. Boy, is that fun stuff for a language geek, plus I got to see some friends from the ol' days: P.J. Plauger, Rex Jaeschke, and Thomas Plum, who was the host of the meetings. It was actually pretty grueling, with five days of 8:30 - 5 sessions that moved at a remarkable pace. On top of that, there were another 2 days on the CLI standard, which I skipped out on.

Okay, so this is the big joke from the conference: in C++/CLI there's a need to distinguish between allocation on the native heap from allocation on .NET's managed heap. C++ native heap allocation will use the traditional new keyword:

Type* t = new Type;

So everyone started chuckling when it was suggested that allocation of a managed object be specified to use the "new" version of new:

Type^ t = new new Type;

But people were rolling on the floor at the next step:

Type^ t = new improved Type;

Oh, man! We were out of control!

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