Programming C# 5.0

Preface

C# is now well into its second decade. It has grown steadily in both power and size, but Microsoft has always kept the essential characteristics intact—C# still feels like the same language as was first unveiled back in 2000. Each new capability is designed to integrate cleanly with the rest, enhancing the language without turning it into an incoherent bag of miscellaneous features. This philosophy is evident in the most important new addition to C#—its support for asynchronous programming. It has always been possible to use asynchronous APIs in C#, but in the past, this tended to involve convoluted code. In C# 5.0, you can write asynchronous code that looks almost exactly like normal code, so instead of adding weight to the language, this new asynchronous programming support makes things simpler.

Even though C# continues to be a fairly straightforward language at its heart, there is a great deal more to say about it now than in its first incarnation. Successive editions of this book have responded to the language’s progress with ever-increasing page counts, but this latest edition does not merely try to cram in yet more details. It expects a somewhat higher level of technical ability from its readers than before.

Who This Book Is For

I have written this book for experienced developers—I’ve been programming for years, and I’ve set out to make this the book I would want to read if that experience had been in other languages, and I were learning C# today. Whereas previous editions ...