To illustrate the concept of pattern matching, assume the following scenario. We have two object types called Student and Professor. We want to minimize code, so we want to create a single method to output the data from the object passed to it. This object can be a Student or a Professor object. The method needs to figure out which object it is working with and act accordingly. But first, we need to do a few things inside our console application to set things up:

1. Ensure that you have added the following using statement.

        using System.Collections.Generic;

2. You now need to create two new classes called Student and Professor. The code for the Student class needs to look as follows:

        public class Student
        {
          public string Name { get; set; }
          public string LastName { get; set; } 
          public List<int> CourseCodes { get; set; }
        }

3. Next, the code for the Professor class needs to look as follows:

        public class Professor
        {
          public string Name { get; set; }
          public string LastName { get; set; }
          public List<string> TeachesSubjects { get; set; }
        }

To understand where we are going with pattern matching, we first need to understand where we have come from. I will start the next section off by showing you how developers might have written this code before C# 7.0.