Day 9. Using Namespaces in .NET

On Day 1, when you were introduced to the .NET Framework, we talked about the two core components that make it up. The first core component of the .NET Framework is the common language runtime. The common language runtime handles all the internals of running the .NET Framework, such as memory management, security, and type checking. The second core component is the Framework Class Library (FCL). The FCL contains the actual implementation types that you'll use in your applications. Today, you get a better understanding of what the FCL is made up of and how to effectively use namespaces and classes in your applications. You learn

• What a namespace is

• What the common namespaces are in the FCL

• How to find namespaces in the .NET Framework SDK

• Which of the namespaces in the FCL are responsible for what type of functionality

• How to reference namespaces in your Visual Basic .NET and C# classes

• How to program against namespaces; specifically, you learn about the System.IO namespace and the Environment class of the System namespace