Learn The Basics Of LINQ

LINQ (Language INtegrated Query) is a powerful but misunderstood new language feature brought to us in the .NET framework version 3.5 (C# 3.0 and VB 9). Even though this is a new feature, it already has some huge misconceptions (such as thinking LINQ is a replacement to SQL). This article will teach you how to use LINQ (the language itself), where LINQ can save you a lot of time and will cover some basic concepts of Extension Methods and Lambda expressions.

The Need for LINQ

At first, when I didn't understand LINQ, I couldn't appreciate why we needed (or why anyone wanted) it. LINQ seemed very limited in usefulness, and I, like many of my colleagues, bashed it in ignorance. Now, due to understanding the semantics and benefits of the language, I've come to love it and wonder how I lived without it.
LINQ does not allow us to do anything new, as far as functionality goes. Really, if you wanted to make the argument of a 'real programmer', you could do all of this same functionality by writing encyclopedias of C code (heck, might as well just write it in assembly for "performance" reasons). But, LINQ does create a new way of looking at enumerations of data, and gives out-of-the-box functionality for them.
I realize that the above paragraphs might seem vague, so I'll get right into real examples that I have used as well as some odd examples that you might not have thought about as being 'queryable objects'.

Free ASP.NET MVC eBook Tutorial

There has been a lot of excitement in the community about the new ASP.NET MVC framework that is about to ship (literally any day now – announcement coming soon).  As with anything new, people are also asking for more tutorials/samples/documentation that cover how to get started and build applications with it.
Over the last few months I’ve been helping to contribute to an ASP.NET MVC book that Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, and Phil Haack have been writing for Wrox.  The book is now in production, and will be available to buy in stores soon (you can pre-order it on Amazon today).
I wrote the first chapter of the book – which is a 185 page end-to-end tutorial that walks-through building a small, but complete, ASP.NET MVC application from scratch.  The agreement I made with Wrox was that I’d write it for free in return for them also making it available as a free PDF download.