Teaching coworkers LINQ...

Question

I have set myself upon a journey to educate my coworkers (all have accepted my mission, even the boss). Every day I seem to find a piece of code that could have been less error prone if my coworkers knew more about the framework, better-know-framework (in courtesy of DNR ;)) is part two of my teaching process. First part is teaching my coworkers about LINQ, what it can do for them and how it is written.

My big question is where are all the good basic resources for LINQ education, everything if find is tightly coupled to Linq2Sql or all other sorts of material. Neither have I been able to find a tutorial for the actual linq syntax (except a specification of it all).

(I hope this haven't been asked before but if it has please say so, cause then my searching skills have failed ;) )

Basic tutorials (free):

• Introducing LINQ - Part 1
• LINQ to Objects - 5 Minute Overview
• Life After Loops
• LINQPad (samples included seems quite tutoring)

Basic tutorials (commercial sites):

• TekPub - Mastering Linq

Reference sites:

• Hooked on LINQ
• 101 LINQ Samples
• LINQ to Objects (MSDN)

Answer 1

There's a nice one on MSDN.

Answer 2

I find this helpful:

101 LINQ Samples

and a good post on joins.

Answer 3

My suggestion would be to simply have your co-workers download LINQPad.

The software has some tutorials that should cover the basics and it will give them an environment where they can see results almost immediately.

Answer 4

two that I use are

Hooked on Linq

and

MSDN 101 samples

Answer 5

If it doesn't have to be free, the Mastering LINQ Series on Tekpub is great. The guy shows a concept (like a foreach loop to filter data) using "normal" C# code and then using LINQ.

No L2S at all, but all the underlying concepts.

Answer 6

Is anyone on your team familiar with SQL? I don't mean to fucus on Linq2SQL but I have found that people with familiarity with the declarative-nature of SQL (express WHAT you want, not HOW) seem to grasp LINQ more quickly. They might be able to help you reach the rest.

Answer 7

Buy the office a copy 100 copies of Jon Skeet's C# In Depth. It not only covers LINQ syntax and lambda expressions, it is also a good primer for getting people up-to-speed on changes to the language since C# 1.

http://csharpindepth.com

Answer 8

Another answer already mentioned Justin Etheridge's series on TekPub, which is good. Justin also wrote a good blog post comparing LINQ to loops which is worth a look: http://www.codethinked.com/post/2009/06/15/Life-After-Loops.aspx#continue

Answer 9

Introducing LINQ - Part I
Wikipedia

Answer 10

The way I learned a LOT about it is with ReSharper. ReSharper 5's functionality in this is quite an improvement over the 4, in fact...suggesting and converting loops into LINQ method chains with ease.

Of course, you want them to learn as well, so it's important to have em WRITE it as well as having tools like that help out.