Learning C# 3.0

Preface

Congratulations! You’ve decided to learn to program. Maybe you’re learning it for a class, maybe you’re learning it to get ahead at work, or maybe you’re learning it just for fun. Whatever the reason, we’ve written this book to help you learn C#. You don’t need a language reference, or a code analysis book; you want to start from square one and learn to program. In that respect, your desire to learn how to program is more important than which specific language you choose. There are plenty of modern languages out there, and lots of them are quite similar, under the hood.

Why, out of all the languages you could learn, should you pick C#? There are several good reasons:

• C# is the preferred language for use with Microsoft’s .NET platform. That means C# was created for writing Windows applications, and as you know, the majority of the world’s computers run Windows.

• C# is supported by Visual Studio and its counterpart, Visual C# Express. Visual Studio makes writing code easier and faster in hundreds of different ways. And did we mention C# Express is free?

• C# is designed to be powerful enough to write serious business applications, but simple enough to be easy to learn. C# was influenced by the older, and hugely popular, languages C++ and Java™, but was intended to bring all the good features of those languages without the quirks that they’ve acquired over the years.

So, although there are plenty of languages you could learn, we think that C# is an excellent choice to start with.

We could tell you about the new features of C# 3.0, or why we enjoy programming in C# after learning C++, but we suspect most of that won’t matter to you. We wrote this book for people with no experience with C# or any other programming languages, so the differences between C# 2.0 and C# 3.0 probably don’t impress you much. What we can tell you is that C# 3.0 means that the Microsoft .NET team has been refining the language since 2000, and we think the result is a stable, powerful, easy-to-learn language. We commend you on your choice to learn C#, and we’ll try to make the experience as smooth as possible.