The C# compiler defaults to the latest major version of the language that has been released. You may choose to compile any project using a new point release of the language. Choosing a newer version of the language enables your project to make use of the latest language features. In other scenarios, you may need to validate that a project compiles cleanly when using an older version of the language.

This capability decouples the decision to install new versions of the SDK and tools in your development environment from the decision to incorporate new language features in a project. You can install the latest SDK and tools on your build machine. Each project can be configured to use a specific version of the language for its build

Screenshot shows me selecting C# 7.2 for a .net core 2.1 application by changing the advanced options of the project properties build pane

Imagine the scenario you are on a team race, there are a number of stages along the route however only once all you teammates have gotten the the end of a stage can anyone proceed to the next stage.

Now imagine the competitors are threads/tasks and that you had to write this code…. with the .net Barrier class this is quite trivial.

The result looks like this:

In windows we have two types of semaphores, local and named system semaphores.

You can think of a semaphore as a bounder in a nightclub, the responsibility is to only allow a number of people into the club at any one time.

.net has a lightweight semaphore, ‘SemaphoreSlim’ that can be used for local communication (that is to say, system synchronization is not supported)

If you run the code above (e.g. in .net core 2.1 project) you will be presented with the following result

What is happening is that all the tasks try get access to the semaphore, they are all initially blocked until

is called which allows 3 tasks to enter at any one time.