Question

As LINQ is a good query language in dot net and everyone should be able to work with it.
What are the necessary abilities which a programmer should have, before start learning LINQ.

And after that, What should he know about LINQ? (important tips)

Answer 1

What kind of Linq are you interested in – Linq to Objects, Linq to SQL, implementing your own Linq provider ?

My advice is that you should first learn about the features that Linq is based upon :

• IQueryable and IEnumerable extension methods

• Method chaining and deferred execution

• Anonymous methods and lambda expressions

• Linq query syntax

• Expression trees (if you aim at implementing your Linq provider)

Then in turn these features rely on more basic concepts :

• Generics

• Delegates

• Collections

A couple of books that could help you :

• C# in depth (J. Skeet) – great book to learn C#
• LINQ in Action (Marguerie, Eichert, Wooley)