Introduction

In late December 1998, Microsoft began working on a new development platform that would result in an entirely new way to create and run next-generation applications and web services. This new platform was called the .NET Framework and was publicly announced in June 2000.

The .NET Framework unified the existing Windows interfaces and services under a single application programming interface (API) and added many of the emerging industry standards, such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and many existing Microsoft technologies, such as the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM and COM+) and Active Server Pages (ASP). In addition to providing a consistent development experience, the .NET Framework enabled developers to focus on the application logic rather than on more common programming tasks with the inclusion of one of the largest available class libraries. Finally, by running applications in a managed runtime environment that automatically handled memory allocation and provided a “sandboxed” (or restricted access) environment, many common programming errors and tasks were reduced and, in some cases, eliminated.

Now, more than 10 years later, the .NET Framework continues to evolve by simplifying the everyday “pain points” felt by developers and by supporting emerging industry standards and technologies in a way that is easy to use. The most recent release of the .NET Framework provides unparalleled support for working with asynchronous methods and allows you to easily create new Windows Store apps. All of this while continuing to improve the Visual Studio development environment and associated tools to make our lives as developers easier.

At Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in 2008, one of the themes was “make the simple things easy and the difficult things possible.” The .NET Framework achieved that with its first release, and each release after that continues to realize that goal.

The C# (pronounced “See Sharp”) programming language was developed with the .NET Framework by Anders Hejlsberg, Scott Wiltamuth, and Peter Golde and was first available in July 2000. Having been written specifically for the .NET Framework, it is considered by many to be the canonical language of the .NET Framework. As a language, C# drew inspiration for its syntax and primary features from Delphi 5, C++, and Java 2. C# is a general-purpose, object-oriented, type-safe programming language used for writing applications of any type. Just as the .NET Framework continues to evolve, C# also evolves to keep pace with the changes in the .NET Framework and to introduce new language features that continue to make the simple things easy and the difficult things possible.

Although there are more than 50 different programming languages supported by the .NET Framework, C# continues to be one of the most popular and modern general-purpose languages.

Audience and Organization

This book is targeted toward the non-.NET programmer who is venturing into .NET for the first time or an existing .NET programmer trying to learn C#. If you are first learning how to program, this book can help you on your way, but it isn’t intended to be a beginning programming book. The book is designed with the purpose of getting you familiar with how things are done in C# and becoming productive as quickly as possible. I take a different approach in this book by using a more holistic view of the language. I chose this approach to give you the most complete understanding of the C# language by focusing on how the current language features enable you to solve problems.

This book is divided into five parts, each one focusing on a different aspect of the language. These parts progress from the simple fundamentals to more advanced topics, so I recommend reading them in order:

• Part I, “C# Fundamentals,” teaches you about the .NET Framework, the object-oriented programming features of C#, the fundamentals of C# type system, and events. You are also introduced to Visual Studio by building a simple application and finally learn the basics of how to debug an application.

• Part II, “Programming in C#,” teaches you the fundamentals of programming. You learn how to perform loops and work with strings, regular expressions, and collections. Then we move to more advanced topics, such as exception management and generics. Finally, we finish with anonymous functions (lambdas), query expressions (LINQ), and how to interact with dynamic languages.

• Part III, “Working with Data,” shows how to interact with the file system and streams, create and query XML documents, and work with databases.

• Part IV, “Building an Application Using Visual Studio,” starts with building a Windows desktop application using data binding and validation. Next, you learn how to build a Windows Store app, including asynchronous programming, using the async pattern. Finally, you learn how to build an application for the web.

• Part V, “Diving Deeper,” introduces the advanced concepts of attribute programming, dynamic types, and language interoperability. Next, you learn the fundamentals of how the .NET Framework organizes memory, how the garbage collector works, and how the .NET Framework provides mechanisms for deterministic finalization. Finally, you learn how to use multiple threads and parallel processing.

Throughout the book, I use examples that show real-world problems and how to solve them using C# and the .NET Framework. In Part IV, we actually build some complete applications from scratch that draw on the skills you learned in the previous three parts.

Conventions Used in This Book

This book uses several design elements and conventions to help you prioritize and reference the information it contains.

New terms appear in bold for emphasis.

In addition, this book uses various typefaces to help you distinguish code from regular English. Code is presented in a monospace font. Placeholders—words or characters that represent the real words or characters you would type in code—appear in italic monospace. When you are asked to type or enter text, that text appears in bold monospace.

Some code statements presented in this book are too long to appear on a single line. In these cases, a line continuation character is used to indicate that the following line is a continuation of the current statement.

Source Files

The source files referred to throughout the text can be found on the book’s website, www.informit.com/title/9780672336843.

Closing Thoughts

The Microsoft .NET Framework and C# continue to be one of the most powerful yet elegant languages I’ve worked with and provide many exciting opportunities for developing the next “killer application.” You won’t be an expert in C# when you finish this book, but I hope you feel comfortable about creating applications in .NET and C#.