Mark Rendle - Writing Code That Writes Code with Roslyn

Tuesday, 21 April 2020
.NET CSharp Roslyn Virtual

Talk Description

"Roslyn is the “.NET Compiler Platform”, which means it not only compiles C# (and VB.NET) code; it also provides an API so programmers can write programs that understand programs that other programmers have written. You know all those analyzers and code fixes in Visual Studio? Those are written using Roslyn, and you can write your own, and it's much easier than you might think! You can also use Roslyn in regular .NET applications, to read code and do interesting things with it. It's like regular expressions, except it's also the exact opposite of regular expressions because it actually understands the text. Also when you write some Roslyn code and then go get a cup of coffee you’ll still understand it when you come back.

You could even use Roslyn to build a whole application that reads old .NET 4 applications and generates shiny new .NET Core 3.1 applications, which is what Mark’s been doing lately and why he knows all this stuff now that he’s going to share with you. Stuff like how to write your own analyzers and code fixes, and all about SyntaxTrees and SyntaxNodes and Trivia and semantic models and symbols and Visitors and Rewriters, and why immutability is such an important feature of Roslyn but it will bite you, and everything. Okay, not everything, but a lot of good stuff."

Speaker Bio

"Mark Rendle decided he wanted to be a programmer when he was 10, became a professional programmer when he was 16, and is still a programmer 30 years later. He worries that somebody is going to notice he’s having too much fun and make him stop. Right now he’s working on Visual ReCode, a tool for migrating .NET 4 WCF and Web API applications to ASP.NET Core 3.1. His hobbies include collecting jars of dark matter, high-altitude scuba diving, and making up stupid hobbies."

Additional Lightning Talk by Megan from Corriculo Recruitment

We also had a 10-minute lightning talk by Megan Robertson from one of our sponsors, Corriculo Recruitment about the current state of the job market due to the COVID-19 situation. To watch this, see the table of contents in the YouTube video below.

Video

Links

Speaker's Links

Sponsors

  • Corriculo Recruitment - Kindly covering the venue, drinks, and helping us at each event
  • Everstack - Dan's company, helping organise and manage the user group
  • JetBrains - Prize draw sponsor (any JB product the winner likes)
  • Manning Books - Prize draw sponsor (ebook of winner's choice)

News Items

Prize Draw Winners

  • Jetbrains #1: Roland S
  • Jetbrains #2: Joao G
  • Manning ebook: John R