Foreword

It’s difficult for me to write this foreword, not because the road to LINQ was long and arduous or that I’m teary-eyed, wrought with emotion, or finding it difficult to compose just the right the words for a send-off worthy of a product that I’ve poured my very soul into. It’s difficult because I know that this is going to be a well-respected book and I’m finding it tricky to work in a punch line.

For me the LINQ project started years before anything official, back when I was involved in plotting and scheming over a new managed ADO. Back then, a few very smart developers had the audacity to suggest shucking off the chains of traditional data access APIs and designing around the ubiquity of objects and metadata that were fundamental to the new runtime—the Java runtime. Unfortunately, none of that happened. The traditionalists won, and at the time I was one of them. Yet what I gained from that experience was a perspective that data belongs at the heart of any programming system, not bolted on as an afterthought. It made sense that in a system based on objects, data should be objects too. But getting there was going to take overcoming a lot of challenges.

As an engineer, I was at the center of the advancements happening inside Microsoft, designing new APIs and influencing language features that would move us forward. Many of these never made it all the way to shipping products, yet each attempt was a step in the right direction. LINQ is a culmination of these endeavors, of battles fought and lessons learned. It is born out of an accretion of insights from a group of my peers, draws upon existing theories and techniques from computer science at large, and would never have come together without the clear-cut wisdom and attention to detail that is Anders Hejlsberg.

Of course, there were all of you too. LINQ was shaped significantly by the community of developers discussing it on forums and blogs. The ability to receive such immediate feedback was like turning on the lights in a darkened room. It was also energizing to watch as the spark caught fire in so many of you, how you became experts and evangelists, gave talks, wrote articles, and inspired each other.

That’s why this book is so important. Fabrice, Jim, and Steve were a large part of that community and have captured its essence within the pages of their book. LINQ in Action is a book from the people to the people. It’s as if they had decided to throw a party for LINQ and everyone who’s anyone showed up.

So read on, enjoy, and don’t waste time waiting in line for the punch.

MATT WARREN

PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT

MICROSOFT