What is C# 5 and where does it come from?

Question

I know C# 3.5 is used with VS2008 and .NET 3.5.
Also C# 4 is part of VS2010 and .Net 4.0 .
But what is C# 5? What IDE?

Answer 1

At the recent PDC, Anders announced:

• We plan to release a "C# 5" product and a "VB 11" product. The exact names of the products have not been announced yet to my knowledge
• We intend that the "big ticket" feature of C# 5 and VB 11 will be improved asynchronous programming.
• A prototype version of the "async" feature is available for public download now.
• We plan to at some future date release a "compiler as a service" API for C# and VB. You should not expect that to ship at the same time as C# 5 / VB 11; they are separate products.

Anders specifically did not announce:

• When we plan to ship any of these products
• What "ship vehicle" they will go out in; we have not announced a new version of the IDE or the CLR.
• What additional features, if any, will be added to C# 5 or VB 11.

For more information on the async feature in C#, check out the C# dev center or read my Async articles on the subject.