A taste of a .NET language

Last week I delved into the world of .NET on an excellent 4-day training course with Learning Tree International called C# Programming: Hands-On. The course was ably and enthusiastically led by Richard Howells of Dynamisys. With an appropriate sprinkling of practical exercises to break up the theory, the course covered:

• C# syntax and semantics,
• user interface development (briefly),
• custom data types (using classes & structs),
• the .NET Framework which includes a vast library of classes (e.g. collection classes such as List, Queue, Stack and Dictionary) for the developer to exploit,
• interfaces and polymorphism (including a look at IEnumberable – which can be applied to a class to allow foreach loops to iterate through a collection within that class),
• databases access via ADO.NET, LINQ and the Entity Framework (LINQ/EF),
• writing and deploying components
• miscellaneous C# features (such as symbolic operators, indexers, events and delegates, lambda expressions and disposable objects)

It certainly was a whirlwind of information to take on board, but realistically I need to go back over the course notes and exercise manual for it to really sink in. I’m just installing the free Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Express (including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express) now so that I can get stuck in.

As an aside, the course was a good opportunity to refresh my memory on some object-oriented (OO) theory. I do use OO every day at work, but it is nice to remind myself of the theory that underpins it every now and then.

This was the 7th of 8 Learning Tree courses that I need to complete for the MSc in Professional Computing that I’m studying. Next up, ASP.NET in August!