A Developer's Experience

You may not know the guy in black; but you sure should be knowing the guy in green. Don't know him ? I am not a patron of his philosophies against planned design. But he sure is a great guy with lots of good ideas. It was nice having an hour long chat with him.

Alright, it is a long wait. And I am going to keep it short. Recap of the problem: Why did the ref variable in SomeMethod not get the expected result ( DayOfWeek.Friday ) when called from a different thread? Boxing. Yes, that is the culprit. Sometimes, it is subtle to note. DayOfWeek is an enum - a value type. When the method is called from a different thread, we put the argument (arg3) in an object array, and that's where the value gets boxed. So we happen to assign the resultant value to the boxed value. So how do resolve the issue? Simple.......assign the value back from the object array to the ref variable. int SomeMethod(string arg1, string arg2, ref DayOfWeek arg3) { if (Dispatcher.CheckAccess()) { var funcDelegate = (Func<string, string, DayOfWeek, int>)SomeMethod; var args = new object[] { arg1, arg2, arg3 }; int retVal = Dispatcher.Invoke(funcDelegate, args); arg3 = ...