Professional Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 Programming

Chapter 7

Arrays, Collections, and Generics

What's in this chapter?

Working with arrays

Iteration (looping)

Working with collections

Generics

Nullable types

Generic collections

Generic methods

Covariance and contravariance

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In the beginning there were variables, and they were good. The idea that you map a location in memory to a value was a key to tracking a value. However, most people want to work on data as a set. Taking the concept of a variable holding a value, you've moved to the concept of a variable that could reference an array of values. Arrays improved what developers could build, but they weren't the end of the line.

Over time, certain patterns developed in how arrays were used. Instead of just collecting a set of values, many have looked to use arrays to temporarily store values that were awaiting processing, or to provide sorted collections. Each of these patterns started as a best practice for how to build and manipulate array data or to build custom structures that replicate arrays.

The computing world was very familiar with these concepts—for example, using a linked list to enable more flexibility regarding how data is sorted and retrieved. Patterns such as the stack (first in, last ...