Introduction in C#

Printer Data Matrix in C# Introduction

I started programming in C# when version 1.0 was the current release and .NET was being billed as a Java-killer. In fact, the first C# book that I wrote was a guide to the language for Java programmers. It s seven years later, and C# hasn t killed Java, but it has established itself as one of the most useful and expressive programming languages in use today and one of the most widely used. C# has developed its own identity, and each new version of the language has further reinforced that identity. The current version of C#/.NET, version 4, is mature, complete, flexible, and feature rich. The development tools are good, the integration with Windows is excellent, and there is a thriving community of developers providing enhancements and add-on libraries. I like programming in C#, and I hope you will come to like it too. I am not a language evangelist; I believe that the best language to solve a problem is usually the one that you already know. But I find myself turning to C# more and more. I find the development tools to be solid and flexible, I like the integration with Windows, and there are, for me, two killer features. The first is the excellent parallel programming features that let a program do more than one thing at a time (these features are discussed in 24 of this book). The second is the indescribably brilliant data-processing LINQ feature (covered in s 27 31). In this book, I will take you on a tour through C#, starting with the language itself, and then onto the rich APIs that are included with the .NET Framework. My main tool of instruction will be code lots and lots of code. I don t discuss the abstractions of object-oriented programming, for example. I explain it through code samples and illustrations so that you know how it affects your programming and how to get the best results. As we go from chapter to chapter, you ll learn everything you need to know in order to write effective C# programs to solve the problems that you will face most often.

This book was written for programmers who have no experience with C# and/or little to no experience with object-oriented programming. I have tried to explain every term and concept as it arises, but this is a book that teaches C# programming, rather than programming in general.

This book covers the C# language and the major .NET APIs and features. In each chapter you will find an explanation of what a feature is for and what it does, as well as all the information you need to get started using that feature effectively. There are lots of code examples, and each technique is carefully explained. There is only so much content that you can fit into a book, and so, since this is an introduction to C#, I have focused on the features that are most commonly used and are the easiest to use. As C# has evolved, duplicate features have emerged. There are several different APIs available for processing XML

data, for example. In these cases, I have included the most recent or most widely used and have omitted the others. As a new C# programmer, you don t need to know the historic value of this API or that language feature; at this stage, you just need to know how to get something done quickly, cleanly, and effectively. Once you have the basics of C# and an understanding of the current features, you can use this knowledge to work on legacy code if the need arises.