Many programmers come to Silverlight with little prior experience with C#, and thus conceptualize events as a response to an action that is “hooked up” using somewhat arbitrary syntax. All of that is fine, until it isn’t, and so this post will dive a bit deeper into Delegates and Events as core aspects of .Net languages.
Delegates
When a head of state dies, the president of the United States typically doesn’t have time to attend the funeral personally. Instead, he dispatches a delegate. Often this delegate is the vice president, but sometimes the VP is unavailable and the president must send someone else, such as the secretary of state or even the “first lady.” He doesn’t want to “hardwire” his delegated authority to a single person; he might delegate this responsibility to anyone who is able to execute the correct funeral-protocol. The president defines in advance what responsibility will be delegated (attend the funeral), what parameters will be passed (condolences, kind words, warnings to potential usurpers), and what value he hopes to get back (good will, oil). He then assigns a particular person to that delegated responsibility at “runtime” as the course of his presidency progresses. Continue reading →
