About This Course
This section provides you with a brief description of the course, audience, suggested prerequisites, and course objectives.
Course Description
This course will teach you C# language syntax, program structure, and implementation by using Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. This course provides a solid foundation in C# to the level necessary to enable students to attend other courses in the Technical specialist tracks.
Audience
This course is intended for experienced developers who already have programming experience in C, C++, Visual Basic, or Java and understand the concepts of object-oriented programming. This course is not designed for new programmers; it is targeted at professional developers with at least 12 months experience of programming in an object-oriented environment.
Student Prerequisites
This course requires that you meet the following prerequisites:
C++, Java, or experience with another programming language and knowledge of the following items:
Creating classes
Inheritance and abstraction
Polymorphism
Interfaces
Delegates
Events
Exceptions
Knowledge of the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE).
Course Objectives
After completing this course, students will be able to:
Describe the purpose of the .NET Framework, and explain how to use Microsoft Visual C#® and Visual Studio 2010 to build .NET Framework applications.
Describe the syntax of basic C# programming constructs.
Describe how to create and call methods.
Describe how to catch, handle, and throw exceptions.
Describe how to perform basic file I/O operations in a Visual C# application.
Describe how to create and use new types (enumerations, classes, and structures), and explain the differences between reference types and value types.
Describe how to control the visibility and lifetime of members in a type.
Describe how to use inheritance to create new reference types.
Describe how to manage the lifetime of objects and control the use of resources.
Describe how to create properties and indexers to encapsulate data, and explain how to define operators for this data.
Describe how to decouple an operation from the method that implements it, and explain how to use these decoupled operations to handle asynchronous events.
Describe the purpose of collections, and explain how to use generics to implement type-safe collection classes, structures, interfaces, and methods.
Describe how to implement custom collection classes that support enumeration.
Describe how to query in-memory data by using Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) queries.
Describe how to integrate code written by using a dynamic language such as Ruby and Python, or technologies such as Component Object Model (COM), into a C# application.
Course Outline
The course contains the following modules:
Module 1, "Introducing C# and the .NET Framework," provides an overview of the .NET Framework and shows how you can start to build your own .NET Framework applications by using C# and Visual Studio 2010.
Module 2, "Using C# Programming Constructs," provides an introduction to C# programming language syntax and introduces many of the basic C# language data types and programming constructs.
Module 3, "Declaring and Calling Methods," introduces the concept of methods and describes how, in object-oriented languages such as C#, a method is a unit of code that is designed to perform a discrete piece of work. This module shows you how to declare and call methods by using C#.
Module 4, "Handling Exceptions," introduces the importance of exception handling and explains why applications should be designed with exception handling in mind. This module explains how you can implement effective exception handling in your applications and describes how to use exceptions in your methods to indicate an error condition to the code that calls your methods.
Module 5, "Reading and Writing Files," explains how the ability to access and manipulate files on the file system is a common requirement for many applications. This module shows you how to read and write to files by using the classes in the.NET Framework. It also describes the different approaches that you can take and explains how to read and write different formats of data.
Module 6, "Creating New Types," explains how to build your own types that model items in the real world and describes how to implement the business logic for these items that your applications require. This module explains the differences between reference types and value types.
Module 7, "Encapsulating Data and Methods," describes how to use the access modifiers that C# provides to enable you to implement encapsulation. This module also introduces the static modifier, which enables you to define members that can be shared over multiple instances of the same type.
Module 8, "Inheriting from Classes and Implementing Interfaces," explains that inheritance is a key concept in an object-oriented language and describes how you can use inheritance, interfaces, and abstract classes to develop object hierarchies. This module also explains how you can use these object hierarchies to help reduce bugs by defining clear contracts for the functionality that a class should expose and providing default implementations where you can sensibly abstract code into a base type.
Module 9, "Managing the Lifetime of Objects and Controlling Resources," introduces the concept of resource management and discusses its importance. This module explains how the NET Framework simplifies resource management by automatically reclaiming the resources for a managed object when an application no longer references it. This module also explains that the garbage collector does not control unmanaged resources and describes the steps that you can take to dispose of such resources.
Module 10, "Encapsulating Data and Defining Overloaded Operators," introduces properties and indexers. These are elements of C# that enable you to encapsulate data and expose data appropriately and efficiently. This module also describes how to implement operators for your types by using overloading.
Module 11, "Decoupling Methods and Handling Events," explains how to decouple an operation from the method that implements it and describes how to use anonymous methods to implement decoupled operations. This module also explains how to use events to inform consuming applications of a change or notable occurrence in a type.
Module 12, "Using Collections and Building Generic Types," introduces the concept of collection classes and explains that you can use them with greater flexibility than a simple array. This module also introduces generics and explains how to use generic classes to maintain type integrity and avoid the issues that are associated with a lack of type safety.
Module 13, "Building and Enumerating Custom Collection Classes," explains how to use the collection classes that the .NET Framework Base Class Library includes. This module also describes how to build custom collection classes.
Module 14, "Using LINQ to Query Data," explains how you can use LINQ to abstract the mechanism that an application uses to query data from the application code. This module describes built-in C# LINQ extension methods and LINQ query operators. This module also describes how to build LINQ queries dynamically by using expression trees.
Module 15, "Integrating Visual C# Code with Dynamic Languages and COM Components," explains how the .NET Framework 4.0 enables you to invoke code and components that were written by using other languages from your C# code. It describes how the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) enables you to reuse code built by using a wide range of scripting languages, such as Ruby and Python. This module also describes how to invoke COM components from a C# application.
