An Introduction to Programming Using the C# programming language

This course, is aimed at beginners and those with relatively limited programming experience who will be developing and maintaining code primarily for Microsoft systems supporting the .NET framework and who need to master the C# language.

C# is quite a good candidate to study as a first programming language. Object Oriented programming is now well established and with languages such as C# and Java, which take care of memory allocation and memory management "behind the scenes" the complexities of dealing with pointers and dynamic memory allocation, which would be the case in both C and C++ is avoided. This makes it possible to concentrate more on the direct coding of applications. Because the .Net framework supports rich graphical user interfaces then, from the start, students will start building GUI based applications. The course will also provide an overview of .NET and the technology underlying it.
Much of the C# syntax is based on the syntax of C, hence students will also learn C syntax, and, so, be in a good position to study C at a later stage if they need to.
The course will also cover the basics of specifying and designing object oriented programs and the basics of UML notation.
Possible reasons for wishing to learn C# include

• To embrace object oriented techniques from the start - when learning how to program
• Ability to access the rich and powerful functionality of the .NET framework
• As a starting point to learning web site development using ASP.Net and ADO.Net

This course will use Visual Studio 2008 as its Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

The course is mainly a hands on course, with aroung 40% of the course time devoted to instructor presentation and 60% devoted to hands on programming labs. It is a course aimed at those with relatively little programming experience and, as such will concentrate on the fundamentals of C# programming.

The course provides a thorough introduction to the principles and art of object oriented programming in C#.

Skills learned on this course

• Object Oriented Programming - Thinking and Design
• Designing procedural code - sequence, choice and iteration
• Specifying, Implementing and Using functions
• Specifying, Implementing and using C# Classes
• Code reusability and extension through Inheritance
• Arrays and array processing
• Strings and string manipulation
• Using and Specifying Abstract classes and Interfaces
• Polymorphism and its uses
• Reading and writing to files and data persistence
• Basic UML Notation for describing classes and objects and their inter-relations
• Introduction to templates and the Standard Template Library collection classes

• High Level languages compared to Assembler, compared to machine code
• How an executable program is started under an operating system such as Windows
• A short history of .NET and C#
• How data is represented in a computer
• Data types - integers, floating point numbers, characters
• Variables and Literals
• The Object Oriented approach to application development
• Classes as data types
• Objects as instances of a Class
• How .NET works and how C# programs run under .NET

• Data Types
• Integers, Floating Point Numbers , and Arithmetic Operators
• Functions
  • defining functions
  • arguments and local Variables
  • calling functions
  • returning values from functions
• Logical Expressions and Logical Operators
• True and False in C#
• Making choices and decisions
  • if .. else statements
  • switch .. case statements
  • use of break in a switch statement
  • use of default in a switch statement
• Iteration - Loops
  • while loops
  • do .. while loops
  • for loops loops

• defining classes
• member properties
• member methods
• understanding references
• accessibility to member variables and member functions - private, public and protected keywords
• inheritance and class derivation
• UML class diagrams
• arrays of objects
• polymorphism, abstract classes and interfaces

• Forms and Controls and their underlying classes
• Events and event handler functions associated with controls
• Designing Forms in Visual Studio
• .NET Visual Objects
• .NET Database Objects
• Deploying applications - Deployment Packages

• try, catch, throw, finally

• Events and Delegates
• Controls and Graphics
• LINQ