After almost 20 years of developing software on everything from System/38s to AS/400s to OS/2 and now Microsoft Windows, I can say without reservation that I was becoming a victim of burnout. The days of looking forward to the evenings and weekends-not because it meant going home but because it meant being able to work all day and all night without interruption-were becoming a distant memory. I had the feeling that everything worth doing had already been done. That feeling changed in the early part of 2000.
Just a few months prior to Microsoft's announcement of .NET at the 2000 PDC in Orlando, Florida, a good friend of mine let me in on a little secret about a "cool" language called C# and a runtime framework (then called NGWS). Despite his obvious enthusiasm, I had a hard time shaking the memories of other ill-fated global architectures such as IBM's SAA and Microsoft's DNA. As a result, I approached it with more than my share of skepticism.
But the more I programmed with this new language and platform, the more my old enthusiasm started to return. Before long I realized that I was waking up not with the dread of writing the same ol' boring applications once again but with the anticipation of learning some new and exciting part of .NET. Well, it's almost two years later and I'm still learning. In fact, it seems that every new item I learn about .NET opens a dimension of topics that I hadn't known existed before!
Some of this might sound corny, but let's face facts most of us started programming not for the money but for the type of fulfillment and satisfaction that only learning and creating something can bring. For me, C# and the .NET Framework have revived that old enthusiasm that I had started to lose. So, I wrote this book to share in the joy that I've experienced in having fun programming again. Hopefully, when you read this text and start using C#, you'll feel the same way.
While the content of this book has been considerably upgraded with quite a bit of intermediate-to-advanced information, I’ve tried to organize the chapters in such a way that each topic is presented without assuming that you’re an experienced C# developer. To that extent, each chapter begins by explaining a given feature (of C# or .NET), why that feature exists in the language, and the problems it addresses. From there, I begin with a simple demo application to focus on the subject matter, after which I explain the syntax required. Once the basics of a given subject are covered, the chapter then moves into increasingly advanced demos and material, such as the compiler-generated MSIL. Therefore, this book is for the person looking to get started with C# and .NET development, and it’s also for the person that has been programming for a while with the language and would like to learn some of the more advanced uses of the language.
The only assumption this book makes is that you know how to write and build a simple program in C, C++, or Java. The only other prerequisite is the desire to learn and explore new dimensions in writing applications with the C# language. Because you’re holding this book in your hands, you obviously have that bit covered!