Coding Bolt

With the release of .NET 8 comes a new version of C#. Let’s summarize the key new features along with some practical examples. Will keep this post and just highlight the key parts of this release.

Primary Constructors

public class Cat(string name)
{
    public string Name { get; } = name;
}

public struct Dog(string name)
{
    public string Name { get; set; } = name;
}

We can now use primary constructors to initialize classes and structs.

Collection Expressions

Cat[] array = [new Cat("Snow"), new Cat("Blacky")];
List<Cat> list = [new Cat("Snow"), new Cat("Blacky")];

A lot of enumerables can now be initialized in this way.

Alias Any Type

using Point = (int x, int y);

    public void Method()
    {
        var point = new Point(1, 2);

        Console.WriteLine(point.y); // 2
    }

Instead of creating an anonymous value tuple, we can now declare it at the top of our file before using it.

Optional Lambda Parameters

var addWithDefault = (int addTo = 2) => addTo + 1;
addWithDefault(); // 3
addWithDefault(5); // 6

var numbers = (params int[] xs) => xs.Length;
numbers(); // 0
numbers(1, 2, 3); // 3

It is now possible to add default values to parameters inside Lambda expressions.

There are more new features but I do not believe they are useful to most developers. Check out all the new features here:
Primary constructors – C# 12.0 draft feature specifications | Microsoft Learn
Hope you find these useful!