Microsoft® Visual Basic® 2010 Developer’s Handbook

Chapter 18. Advanced Types

In this chapter:
Nullable Value Types
Generic Delegates
Tuple(Of T)
Type Variance
Extension Methods

Along with generics (which you learned about in Chapter 17), in 2005, the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 introduced a very important data type based on this technology: the Nullable value type. As of .NET Framework 3.5, Nullables became available to Visual Basic 2008. You were briefly introduced to Nullables in the Chapter 1. This chapter takes a closer look at them.

With Microsoft Visual Basic 2010, delegates gain additional meaning as a result of the introduction of the multi-line statement lambdas that you learned about in Chapter 15. The manner in which you can approach solving problems changes completely—you might almost ...