One of my favorite questions to ask during an interview is what new features of their preferred programming language / environment they’ve enjoyed, or have been happy to have added. From my perspective, it shows how much they’re keeping up to date with advances in technology as well as their passion level.

I’m not looking for them to be working with cutting edge pre-release versions, but if the most recent addition to the .NET world that they can speak to is LINQ, it provides a strong indicator that they will have a lot to catch up on.

However, while going through a recent interview, I had someone ask me the same question and, after I commented on how much I’ve used it, I froze up and realized that I didn’t have a good answer. I know that I’ve started to incorporate some of the different C# language features that have been added, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell when they were added or what other enhancements I have missed.

This series will be going backwards through time, covering the C# version history. I’ll start with 11, the most recently released version at the time this was written.