This book provides an introduction to C# but it's far from all-inclusive. This book is intended for beginners and many topics are too advanced to fit in here because they are hard to understand (so would take too long to explain), require knowledge of matters outside the scope of this book (such as how the operating system works), or are just too specialized to be interesting to everyone (or in some cases, anyone).

Hopefully you followed along through all of the lessons, worked through the Try Its and exercises, and feel comfortable with the material presented in this book. In that case, you're ready to move on to more advanced general C# texts such as:

• Professional C# 5.0 and .NET 4.5.1 (Christian Nagel and Jay Glynn, Wrox, 2014)
• C# 5.0 Programmer's Reference (Rod Stephens, Wrox, 2014)
• MCSD Certification Toolkit (Exam 70-483): Programming in C# (Tiberiu Covaci et al., Wrox, 2013)

You're also ready to branch out into new uses for C#. Most of this book focuses on the C# language itself and uses Windows Forms programs but some other important uses of C# include:

• WPF—Many of the lessons introduced you to XAML and WPF programming, but there's a lot more to learn. Many books (including my book WPF Programmer's Reference, Stephens, Wrox, 2010) provide much more thorough coverage of WPF.
• ASP.NET—ASP.NET is a web programming framework that lets you build pages, sites, and applications that run on the web. C# (or Visual Basic) code can sit behind the interface presented in the browser much as code-behind sits behind Windows Forms and WPF user interfaces. For more information, see an ASP.NET book such as Beginning ASP.NET 4.5.1 in C# and VB (Imar Spaanjaars, Wrox, 2014) or Professional ASP.NET 4.5 in C# and VB (Jason N. Gaylord and Christian Wenz, Wrox, 2013).

Finally, you're ready to look at more specialized uses for C#:

• Console applications—These programs do not have window-based user interfaces. Instead they display textual output in a console window. See msdn.microsoft.com/0wc2kk78.aspx.
• Class libraries—A class library holds compiled classes that you can use in other applications. If several applications need to use the same kinds of classes (Customer, Employee, Order), then it makes sense to let them share a common library.
• Control libraries—A control library is a class library that holds new controls. You can build your own controls that are composed of existing controls, that are derived from existing controls, or that you build completely from scratch.
• Office applications—You can build C# programs that interact with Microsoft Office applications such as Word or Excel.
• Cryptography—The .NET Framework includes an extensive set of cryptographic tools for encrypting, decrypting, and signing documents. See msdn.microsoft.com/92f9ye3s.aspx.
• Parallel programming—The .NET Framework also includes classes that let you take advantage of the multiple cores that are available on many new computers. See msdn.microsoft.com/dd460717%28VS.100%29.aspx.
• Game programming—Microsoft's game development tools let you build games that run on the desktop, in the browser, on mobile devices, and even on the Xbox game console. See msdn.microsoft.com/games-development-msdn.
• Database programming—A large majority of commercial applications have a significant database component. For information on general database programming, see a book such as Practical Database Programming with Visual C#.NET (Ying Bai, Wiley, 2010). For information on designing databases, see a book such as Beginning Database Design Solutions (Rod Stephens, Wrox, 2008).

Now that you've finished this book, you're ready to move on to more complicated and interesting topics. As you learn more about C# development, you'll discover more and more fields of programming that you never knew existed.