Delegates

Delegates are individuals or entities authorized to act on behalf of others in formal settings. The term is used in politics to describe people chosen to represent voters at conventions or assemblies, and in computer science to describe a type that references methods.

In politics and party governance, delegates are selected through primaries, caucuses, or party rules to attend a convention and cast votes to nominate candidates and shape the party platform. Some delegates are pledged to support a specific candidate or slate of candidates, while others are unpledged (often called "superdelegates" in certain systems) and may vote at their discretion. The exact role, binding rules, and influence of delegates vary by country and by party.

In software development, a delegate is a construct that encapsulates a reference to a method with a given signature. Delegates enable methods to be passed as arguments, stored in variables, or invoked as callbacks, facilitating event handling and asynchronous programming. The concept is most prominent in languages that provide built-in delegate types or first-class function references, such as C#, where a delegate defines the signature and can refer to any compatible method. In other languages, similar patterns are implemented through function pointers, interfaces, or closures.

The word also serves in common usage to describe a person who acts on behalf of a group in a representative capacity, such as a conference delegate or a corporate delegate. The precise duties depend on the context and governing rules.