Everything is about perception. When people look at Umbrella, they think it is huge; for us, it is simply a thin layer over the BCL and various MS technologies that improve the development experience.

Design principles for Umbrella are really simple:

• Eat our own dog food
  • Umbrella has been developed using Umbrella.
• Don’t repeat yourself
  • It’s really about addressing an issue once and only once.
• Stronger abstractions
  • Coming up with the ISource<T> name for a generic getter-setter allows us to create higher abstraction.
• Fluent interface
  • name.Validation().NotNull() as opposed to ArgumentHelper.CheckNotNull(name)
• Predictability
  • The members are where they feel natural and discoverability is easy.
• Zero friction
  • Supported by other principles, it is mainly focused as working effectively in a TDD environment, easily mockable, extensible, …
• Leverage and Reuse
  • We use Action<T> and Func<T> as opposed to defining new delegates over and over again

In order to make this happen, we heavily rely on new C# 3.0 language features like lambda expressions and extension methods.

In order to showcase many of the functionalities we use on a daily basis, we’re launching a new serie of blog posts focused specifically at Umbrella. Stay tuned!

() => “Francois”