C# 11 Expansion!
After last week’s bad news, I have some good news to share!
I’ve release my first ever expansion: one that covers C# 11!
It is free on Gumroad, though it has a “pay what you want” feature, if you feel the need to figuratively buy me a coffee/beer. (But do keep in mind this is only 18 pages. It’s not that big of a deal.)
Here’s the link: https://rbwhitaker.gumroad.com/l/csharp11expansion
Go ahead and get it now, and then come back for story time as it downloads.
So.
I had originally planned for the sixth edition of the C# Player’s Guide to come out in November of 2022, when C# 11 came out. As always, I like to revise sections that I’ve seen readers struggle with. (That’s one of the biggest benefits of having a Discord server.) As I started doing that, and sharing my progress with early access readers, the scope began to grow like crazy. I figured I could put off the release by another month or two or three, to finish up everything I wanted to do. But by March, I was starting to realize that I still had a long way to go, and the fact that C# 11 had already been out for so long was bothering me.
So I decided to act on a plan that has been stirring in the back of my mind for a while: expansions!
That is, I figured I can wait for a bit on the major updates and get some content out about C# 11 in a small, standalone package, while still feeling like it is part of the same book and storyline. So that’s what this C# 11 Expansion is. It contains about 18 pages of content, including information about all of the no-longer-all-that-new C# 11 features, 4 more challenges worth another 450XP (add it to your total). It also includes some information on a couple of key areas that I’ve seen people struggle with–especially the part where you have to convert strings to enumerations and tuples, along with some guidance to make Simula’s Soup and Vin Fletcher’s Arrows go a little more smoothly. (Those are two challenges that ended up harder than I had intended. I’ll rework them for the sixth edition, but the new hints and guidance should help people navigate that a bit more easily.)
The main downside to this expansion is that it took three months. I had expected it to take three weeks. I’m not sure what that says about the cost of making these expansions, but I should add that I’ve also had a lot of other things going on in my life that have complicated the natural progression on the book. I still feel like it could have been done in three weeks, despite how long it ended up taking. But maybe I’m just too optimistic about schedule stuff–as is often the case among software people.
So there are likely to be other expansions in the future, but right now, my attention is now turning back to the sixth edition.
At this point, I fully expect the sixth edition to come out in November (give or take) with C# 12, and include the C# 12 features in the book. Though that date is a guess, not a promise, as always.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the C# 11 Expansion!