Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2008: The Language is organized into five parts.

Part I, introduces the basic concepts of the language. Chapter 1, is a general overview of the language. Chapter 2, introduces the subject of types, which includes classes and value types. Chapter 3, explains inheritance and related keywords, such as virtual, override, sealed, and abstract.

Part II, covers the core skills required to create a C# application. Chapter 4, reviews Visual Studio 2008, which is the central tool in developing a managed application. Chapter 5, explains arrays and collections. It is hard to imagine a competent C# application that does not employ an array. Chapter 6, discusses LINQ using LINQ to Objects, which is the implicit LINQ provider. Chapter 7, is about generics, which are parameterized types. Chapter 8, pertains to the enumeration of collection-related classes and iterators.

Part III, focuses on additional language features. Chapter 9, reviews operator overloading and how to expand the behavior of user-defined types to include operators. Chapter 10, details managed function references, which are represented by delegates and events in managed code. Chapter 11, is a further exploration of LINQ programming using LINQ to XML and LINQ to SQL providers. Chapter 12, explains structured exception handling, which is provided by the Common Language Runtime (CLR).

Part IV, is an all-inclusive exploration of debugging managed code. The first two chapters in this section provide an internal view of an assembly, which is critical for anyone debugging a managed application: Chapter 13, introduces metadata and reflection; Chapter 14, is an overview of Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) programming. Chapter 15, discusses debugging with Visual Studio, which is the preferred debugging environment for most developers. Finally, Chapter 16, discusses advanced debugging using the MDbg, WinDbg, and SOS debugger extensions.

The final part of this book, Part V, is "Advanced Concepts." Memory Management, covers managed memory and garbage collection in the managed environment. Chapter 18, explains unsafe code, direct pointer manipulation, and calling native functions.