Summary

Today was a long day, but it was filled with valuable information. You learned what namespaces are and how you can use them in your applications. You also saw a breakdown of the key namespaces in the .NET Framework, and you learned how to implement the System.IO namespace and the System.Environment class. Over the remainder of this week and next week, you'll learn how to implement many more of the core namespaces in .NET, including System.Data, System.XML, System.Globalization, and others.

Some key points to remember from today:

• Be sure to reference assemblies before you use them in your applications.

• Use the Imports statement in Visual Basic .NET and using statement in C# to avoid using fully qualified names.

• Take time now to familiarize yourself with the .NET Framework SDK and the Visual Studio help files. Doing so will save you hours and hours of time in the future.

• Use the static methods of the File, Directory, and Path classes to do one-off operations. Don't use them for multiple file or directory operations because of the overhead of security checks.

• Use the Toolbox to save cool code snippets! Keep building your personal code library by taking advantage of the drag-and-drop capability of the Toolbox to save snippets for later use.