A note to myself, and to others who may find it useful:

Use System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection<T> (or a subclass) as the return type for properties exposing collections of related items on your presentation model classes if you intend to bind to the relationships with Windows Forms BindingSources.

Collection<T> appears to be the lowest-level type in Framework 3.5 that provides both the non-generic IList implementation as required by the binding system and also provides strongly-typed programmatic access to the elements of the collection. It is used as the base for BindingList<T>, ObservableCollection<T> and many others and you can easily inherit from it yourself.

Using a return type of IList<T> or ICollection<T> instead, which may be preferred for being less concrete, is not sufficient as neither of these inherit from the non-generic IList and will fail to bind correctly (sometimes throwing exceptions) at run-time when the parent list of the bound relationship is empty.

As promised in May, it is time for the August Geek Dinner, specifically the time will be 6:30pm on Saturday 16th August. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food and atmosphere of Caffe Amore on the corner of Pulteney and Pirie Streets last time so we'll be going there again this time.

If you're already on the geek dinner mailing list from previous times expect an invitation shortly. If you've never been invited before or you think your invite may be lost in the mail, just contact me and I'll make sure you get included.

Please RSVP before Wednesday 13th August so I can finalise the booking with the restaurant. Hope to see you all there!