---
title: "Two Powerful Generic Collections And Algorithms Libraries"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/5/20/two-powerful-generic-collections-and-algorithms-libraries.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/5/20/two-powerful-generic-collections-and-algorithms-libraries.html"
published: "2006-05-20T14:21:00"
updated: "2006-05-20T14:21:00"
tags: [".Net 2.0"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Two very good resource links that Oren pointed out to in at the end of his presentation about advanced use of Generics and Delegates are two powerful Generic Collection Frameworks: PowerCollections (by Wintellect, free…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Two Powerful Generic Collections And Algorithms Libraries

By Roy Osherove May 20, 2006 In [.Net 2.0](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-2-0)

**Historical article** · Originally published May 20, 2006; technical details may be outdated.

Two very good resource links that [Oren pointed out to in at the end of his presentation about advanced use of Generics and Delegates](http://www.lnbogen.com/SlidesDemosFromMyCodeTemplatingPresentation.aspx) are two powerful Generic Collection Frameworks:

- [PowerCollections](http://www.wintellect.com/MemberOnly/PowerCollections.aspx) (by Wintellect, free sign up required)

"Power Collections extends the Base Class Library with an algorithms class and a series of new containers. This has been created by you, the developer community. We ask for your input on the specification, design and code and invite you to submit your own.
"

- [C5 Generic Collection Library](http://www.itu.dk/research/c5/)

"C5 provides functionality and data structures not provided by the standard .Net System.Collections.Generic namespace, such as persistent tree data structures, heap based priority queues, hash indexed array lists and linked lists, and events on collection changes. Also, it is more comprehensive than collection class libraries on other similar platforms, such as Java. Unlike many other collection class libraries, C5 is designed with a strict policy of supporting "code to interface not implementation"."

**The clear power winner** of these two is the C5 Library. It has **lots** of new classes seems to be very well thought out. I haven't gotten the chance to use either of these in my projects yet, but playing around with them I was very impressed with both.

## More in .Net 2.0

[All posts in .Net 2.0](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-2-0)

- Jun 11, 2006

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- May 29, 2006

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- May 18, 2006

    ### [CLR Generics Vs. C++ Templates - some good links](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/5/18/clr-generics-vs-c-templates-some-good-links.html)

- May 18, 2006

    ### [Oren Ellenbogen rocked last night about Generics, Delegates and Anonymous Methods.](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/5/18/oren-ellenbogen-rocked-last-night-about-generics-delegates-a.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/