Craig

Thank you for the insight.

I assumed that Intellisense had something to do with it.



>Some background may help. This is how it was explained to me by MSFT.
>
>SQL is designed for relational databases. They wanted something that resembled SQL, but worked across different types of data, meaning databases, XML, objects, etc. There was a big powwow that included people like Anders Hjelsberg, the FoxPro team, and many others from multiple teams. The Fox team's ideas were well received and many of their suggestions were used.
>
>The ideas were taken back to the languages teams (VB and C# were separate teams back then). The C# team did something that resembles LINQ today as far as syntax and how you order different parts of the statement (where, from, etc). The VB team worked on something closer to SQL syntax where you list fields/properties first, then from, where etc. They ended up abandoning that because they couldn't get intellisense to work properly if you listed the fields/properties first. The parser had no idea where to pull that informaiton from. So, they did what the C# team did. But the VB team added some extensions that C# didn't (easier XML support for example).
>
>Some people here on the UT have argued that Intellisense could have been made to work properly. My suggestion was they talk to the Languages team because they have some REALLY smart people on the team (Calvin Hsia did alot of intellisense work for VB) and they couldn't get it to work.
>
>Anway, that's why it ended up weird and unintuitive. I keep this site (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/101-LINQ-Samples-3fb9811b) bookmarked because I still have trouble with LINQ. There's a similar site for VB at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio//bb688088.aspx.
>
>One nice thing about Entity Framework is you don't need to know alot of LINQ to make it work.
>
>>Craig
>>
>>I understand it, but I find it weird and unintuitive.
>>I understood it when I was using it in examples, but when I came back to it after leaving it alone for a while it looked like gobbledy-de-gook.
>>I forced myself to use it for a while, but since I haven't come across any functions that can only be done by using LINQ, I ultimately decided not to bother with it.