Why Sharpen

Sharpen is a result of a strong personal belief and a personal need.

I firmly believe that new C# features improve our code. They make it shorter, simpler, more expressive, more performant, and more readable. I believe developers should actively learn, understand and critically apply new C# features in their everyday work.

I ❤ C#. I love the fact that it evolves and that it evolves quickly. But I keep seeing a problem this fast-paced evolution causes. Developers have difficulties catching up with new language features and concepts.

For the past couple of years, I've been giving talks and workshops on new C# features. Year after year I keep noticing a disturbing fact. Developers come to a talk, hear about new features and months after report that they are still not using them in their everyday work. In my experience, the adoption of new C# features is rather slow. There are numerous reasons for that, for sure. One of them is a lack of a clear connection between a new feature and an existing code where that feature can be used. As many other C# evangelists, I tended to use simplified, artificial code samples in my workshops and talks. What I needed and wanted to have was a tool that will point out places in developers' existing code where they can immediately start applying new C# features. I needed a tool that will help them learn C# quicker and more efficiently, by providing high-quality and easily accessible documentation.

That's why I've started building Sharpen. To help developers efficiently learn and apply new C# features in their everyday coding. And to make my talks and workshops more tangible and more efficient.

Sharpen is in a very early stage at the moment. But the feedback I got so far, together with the number of downloads on the Visual Studio marketplace, tells me that it starts to fulfill its intended purpose :-)