As is the tradition of this no-blog when a new version of the C# programming language is released, I must inform my millions of readers of my correct opinion of the new feature set. It seems to me that C# 8.0 is the most impactful release of C# only rivaled by version 2 (and of course version 1.0 since it went from non-existing to existing with that version). I guess I will need to split this commentary in parts. This first part is about the gamechanger – non-nullable reference types...

   GUI development in C# has fallen to the sidelines in recent years. The main reason is the rise of mobile platforms and the fact that traditional C# GUI tools focus on Windows. That being said in 2018 we see a resurgence in interest in .NET based GUI frameworks. The most interesting are in experimental stage but the sheer amount of interest and the reaction from the community makes me believe that at least one of them will make it to production-ready state and will see significant use in the industry. For completeness I will list older frameworks. Note that I only have experience with Win Forms, WPF and UWP so the information on the other frameworks may not be correct. In addition the experimental frameworks will probably see significant development in the coming months and some of them may even stop development so if you are from the future make sure you look for the current status of each project. BTW do we have flying cars yet? Did Web Assembly make it?

   There is a simple pattern that is extremely effective and increases source code readability with practically no downsides. Sadly this pattern is underused and many developers do not even think about it. I am talking of course the ThrowIf methods used to throw exceptions when validating state and arguments.

   With C# 7.0 now released, it is time to share my opinion, also known as the correct opinion, on the new features. People who are too lazy or uninformed to form their own opinion can safely use mine. I will not charge you for that. Sharing my opinion is absolutely free. If you are interested in more impartial overview of the features (i.e. if you really want to form your own opinion and risk being wrong) you can read Microsoft's post on the topic and the Stack Overflow documentation article. So let's begin...

   AutoMapper is a library used to copy the properties from one object to another. Developers usually need this to copy data from their entities to their view models or DTOs. I once evaluated AutoMapper for a project and decided that I do not want to use it. Now I am working on a project where I am not the one choosing the tools so I get to use it. I have now confirmed that using AutoMapper is the wrong choice for most projects but interestingly the real-world issues with it were different from what I expected...