C# 5.0 All-in-One For Dummies

Introduction

C# 5.0 All-in-One For Dummies represents a different way of looking at programming languages. Rather than present the standard For Dummies format, which includes only 350 pages on quite a large subject, the book was expanded to include a broader scope and just a few pages were added.

So, although you find all the original C# For Dummies goodness in this book, you also find discussions about Visual Studio, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), service-oriented development, web development, and a host of other topics. This book is a one-stop shop for a C# developer.

The C# programming language is a powerful and, at some 11 years old, relatively mature descendant of the earlier C, C++, and Java languages. Programming with C# is lots of fun, as you’re about to find out in this book.

Microsoft created C# as a major part of its .NET initiative. The company turned over the specifications for the C# language to the ECMA (pronounced “ek-ma”) international standards committee in the summer of 2000 so that any company can, in theory, come up with its own version of C# written to run on any operating system, on any machine larger than a calculator.

When the first edition of this book was published, the Microsoft C# compiler was the only game in town, and its Visual Studio .NET suite of tools was the only way to program C# (other than at the Windows command line). Since then, however, Visual Studio has undergone three major revisions — the latest is Visual Studio 2012. And, ...