In my recently posted tutorial, I created the render state objects using some old-school syntax.

StencilAlways = new DepthStencilState();
StencilAlways.StencilEnable = true;
StencilAlways.StencilFunction = CompareFunction.Always;
StencilAlways.StencilPass = StencilOperation.Replace;
StencilAlways.ReferenceStencil = 1;
StencilAlways.DepthBufferEnable = false;

You can do this in a much prettier way nowadays.

StencilAlways = new DepthStencilState()
{
  StencilEnable = true,
  StencilFunction = CompareFunction.Always,
  StencilPass = StencilOperation.Replace,
  ReferenceStencil = 1,
  DepthBufferEnable = false
};

That is so much nicer to read. I’ve seen this syntax before, but 20 years of habits die hard and I rarely remember to use it. Hopefully it will stick now, and make my crappy code that much less crappy.