Tag: csharp

Use string interpolation for one-shot composition of a fixed set of values; use StringBuilder when you append in a loop or across an unknown number of pieces. The dividing line is the loop, not the number of values.

How to add a custom category to UiPath's Project Settings from your activity package, register fields at design time via IRegisterWorkflowDesignApi, and read those values back at runtime through IExecutorRuntime — with the App Insights instrumentation key as the example.

A modern UiPath custom activity needs more than a CodeActivity: a DesignPropertiesViewModel, an embedded metadata file for the toolbox, private host-supplied references, and the right System.Activities assembly version. Here's the whole recipe.

Four ways to guard a critical section in C#, and a decision matrix for picking one. Use System.Threading.Lock for synchronous mutual exclusion on .NET 9+, SemaphoreSlim when the section spans an await, and Monitor only when you need Wait/Pulse.

If you came from Semantic Kernel looking for 'skills,' the Microsoft Agent Framework 1.0 calls them function tools and builds every one from AIFunctionFactory.Create. Here are the three ways to author one in C# -- an inline lambda, a named method, or a class of related tools -- plus what the declarative YAML 'file' approach can and cannot do.

Three ways to push work onto the thread pool in C#, and which one to reach for. Use Task.Run for almost everything, ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem<TState> for allocation-free fire-and-forget, and Task.Factory.StartNew only for LongRunning or a custom scheduler.

.NET 11 Preview 4 ships DeflateEncoder, GZipEncoder, and ZLibEncoder plus matching decoders so you can compress straight into a Span<byte> with OperationStatus, no Stream required.

C# 16 redesigns the unsafe keyword so it propagates a caller obligation instead of silently opening an unsafe context, with inner unsafe blocks now mandatory.

ConfigureAwait(false) is still mandatory in library code that may run under a SynchronizationContext (WinForms, WPF, MAUI). In application code on ASP.NET Core, a console app, or a worker service running on .NET 11, it is a no-op.

Three sequence interfaces, three execution models. Use IQueryable when a database can translate the query, IAsyncEnumerable when the producer is async and you want to stream, IEnumerable for everything else in memory.