I have been trying to push myself for learning LINQ and Lambda expressions for quite some time now. I try to create some dummy projects sometimes but since our current project is being developed in .NET Framework v2.0 so these very new things get out of touch very soon. Also, there is so much happening around in the field of technology that keeping track of technological innovations in .NET field alone gets tough with the given schedule.
I was looking for ways to get chance to work on LINQ in the office itself. Recently I found a great utility for that purpose. It is called LINQPad.
It is a very good utility which could be used to evaluate LINQ expressions on the fly. It can also be used for quick scripting in C# and evaluate the outcome. To do a quick analysis of some syntax I normally use Immediate Window in Visual Studio but it is only applicable for one liner simple statements.
If you need to write a snippet and evaluate it then Immediate Window will not be very helpful. LINQPad can do that job for me. I can write quick code snippets and evaluate the output very quickly. Currently it supports both C# and VB.NET. It can also give you the SQL and Lambda expressions for the LINQ queries provided.
Interestingly, you can also integrate nHibernate with LINQPad. Follow this link.
It indeed is a great utility which meets my objective very precisely. Happy LINQing!
