Talk:Delegate (.NET)

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[edit] More information…

I promise to add more to this in the future, including examples. I searched all over and could not find any explanation of delegates in Wikipedia. They are a major part of .NET and C#, and therefore deserve at least some explanation.

TheMuuj 03:18, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not specific to .NET

The concept of delegates, and it's support in programming languages, predates the .NET framework.

Yes, that's what I think too. That .NET merely implements this idea that has been around since earlier. In that case, this article should probably be moved to something like delegate (computer science), and have that information included. -- Northgrove 12:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The rather poorly named facility referred to here as "delegate" is what is more generally known as a function or routine type. This concept dates back as least as far as Algol 60. Unfortunately, the term delegate is easy to confuse with "delegation" which refers to the implementation of a class using the facilities already provided by another class.

Indeed not specific to .NET, I just added an example in Java using PerfectJPattern. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bravegag (talk • contribs) 12:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC) I agree. The title of the article makes no sense, especially with examples written in Java. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.250.5.238 (talk) 16:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Function/routine types are not neccesarily the same as delegates and whilst a function type that implements the same mechanisms may be called a delegate not all function types do. The concept is an old one, but what makes a degate a delegate is the fact that it is .net type safe, I believe that the term has come into being through .net and as such is specific to .net Retrospectively applying the term to older languages and implementatons may be helpful in cases where similar mechanisms are used, however this should not just include the ability to call another function using a reference or pointer. I agree that examples in C# or VB.net would be more helpful.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.105.33.7 (talk) 18:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)