I am surprised how many people still don't know they can alias namespaces using the C# keyword using.  Resharper automatically adds this syntax for me and it seems like 1 person a month says that didn't know.

   1: using Short = Company.Project.Task.Function;

The reason for this post; however, is to show another usage of the C# keyword using.  I saw this and thought it was worth your time.  When using generics the < and > can become unreadable at times and with a little help from "using" we can make it look nice.  Let's look at an example:

   1: Dictionary<int, string> idNameMapping;

Or we might have even more complex data structures where Id is mapped to another dictionary:

   1: Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, int>> complexIdMapping;

Well that doesn't look so great and if we had more generics then it would look even worse.  Now with a little help from "using" we can clean it up.

   1: using Item = System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<string, string>;

   2:  

   3: namespace wijix

   4: {

   5:     using Records = Dictionary<int, Item>;

   6:     public class Controller

   7:     {

   8:         Records recordDictionary = new Records();

   9:     }

  10: }

Now...  I may never do this in my code but it was interesting to know.