Professional C# 2005

Chapter 2. C# Basics

Now that you understand a little more about what C# can do, you will want to learn how to use it. This chapter on the basics of C# gives you a good start in that direction by providing you with a basic knowledge of the fundamentals of C# programming, which we build on in subsequent chapters. The main topics we cover are:

• Declaring variables

• Initialization and scope of variables

• Predefined C# data types

• Dictating the flow of execution within a C# program using loops and conditional statements

• Enumerations

• Namespaces

• The Main() method

• Basic command-line C# compiler options

• Using System.Console to perform console I/O

• Using documentation features in C# and Visual Studio .NET

• C# identifiers and keywords

• Recommended guidelines and conventions for good programming in C#

By the end of this chapter, you will know enough C# to write simple programs, though without using inheritance or other object-oriented features, which are covered in the following chapters.

Before We Start

As already mentioned, C# is an object-oriented language. As we get you up to speed in the fundamentals of the C# language, we will be assuming that you have a good grasp of the concepts behind object-oriented (OO) programming. In other words, we will expect you to understand what we mean by classes, objects, interfaces, and inheritance. If you have programmed in C++ or Java before, you should have a pretty good grounding in object-oriented programming (OOP). However, if you do not have a background in OOP, plenty ...