Nifty basic things missing in .NET framework: 1. Get property without worrying about null checks: someObject.IfNotNull(o => o.Property) (Nice side-effect is that accessor code is only executed when needed. Also, it's smart enough not to return null where empty collection would fit) 2. Generate sequence out of anything, say, from a node's parents…

EnumerableExtensions.cs

using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace System.Linq
{
    public static class EnumerableExtension
    {
        public static IEnumerable<T> Generate<T>(this T seed)
        {
            return new T[] { seed };
        }
        
        public static IEnumerable<T> Generate<T>(this T seed, Func<T, T> step)
        {
            if (null == seed)
            {
                yield break;
            }
            
            yield return seed;
            T prev;
            
            while ((null != (seed = step(prev = seed)) && !object.ReferenceEquals(prev, seed)))
            {
                yield return seed;
            }
        }
    }
}

ObjectExtensions.cs

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

namespace System
{
    public static class ObjectExtension
    {
        public static IEnumerable<OUTPUT> IfNotNull<INPUT, OUTPUT>(this INPUT value, Func<INPUT, IEnumerable<OUTPUT>> getResult)
        {
            return null != value ? getResult(value) : Enumerable.Empty<OUTPUT>();
        }

        public static OUTPUT IfNotNull<INPUT, OUTPUT>(this INPUT value, Func<INPUT, OUTPUT> getResult)
        {
            return null != value ? getResult(value) : default(OUTPUT);
        }
        
        public static void IfNotNull<INPUT>(this INPUT value, Action<INPUT> action)
        {
            if(null != value)
            {
                action(value);
            }
        }
    }
}

Good conceptual description of the second problem in Java: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/271526/avoiding-null-statements-in-java