Tuple in C# 4.0

Tuple is defined as a Sequence (or ordered list) of finite length. Other definitions exist but I particularly like to see it as such.

I have been craving for this feature ever since seen in Cw(C-Omega). This is particularly useful when you want to return multiple values from a function/method especially when they are not related enough to want to put then in a class or struct. Some developers like myself result to using multiple out parameters. This gets messy for methods that have return type and so inconsistence in returning values from such methods.


   1: var x = DoSomething(out int a, out int b);

The compiler is smart enough to detect when you have unmatched number of arguments

   1: var myTuple = new Tuple<int, int, int>(0, 1); 

or request for a member beyond it's definition

   1: Console.WriteLine(myTuple.Item4); 

Tuples in C# 4.0 lacks the ability to get the Length/ Count/Size value even though the underlying interface ITuple specifies this. I guess the C# team pulled this out to prevent us from seeing or using this as an Array or Collections.

In the Beta 1 Release, I tried getting my hands dirty with this and was shocked on a discovery. Something about an error on the eight argument of a tuple being requeired to be ITuple. I searched online for this and came across an interesting Post about infinite Tuple (Tuple with eight parameters in constructor)

   1: Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, int, int, int> 

http://blog.dynamicprogrammer.com/2009/05/25/TupleANewTypeOnNet40.aspx

ResolverOne - IronPython Spreadsheet

   I met Michael Foord (the kind of guy that runs Windows on MacPro. He also wrote a book IronPython in Action still in print by Manning ) recently and he was so passionate about what he's been doing in the IronPython  Space. He has this cool programmable spreadsheet application dubbed ResolverOne . Believe me, this will make you never want to touch VBA. 

A  similar implementation was demoed at Mix09 by John Lam (the IronRuby guy) with Silverlight 3 - this I learnt came with deep multimedia capability and can run out of the browser sandbox to run on the GPU.  ResolverOne is a pretty cool implementation of spreadsheet and I am yet to imagine the bound of it's limitation. You could actually do anything imaginable about spreadsheet. I have revved this since the summit and still amazed how easy to import any existing python library and use user custom functions/libraries.