Sams Teach Yourself .Net in 21 Days

By Jason Beres

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You
  • Introduction
  • Week 1: At a Glance
  • Day 1. Introduction to the Microsoft .NET Framework
  • Day 2. Introduction to Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 3. Writing Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 4. Deploying Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 5. Writing ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 6. Deploying ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 7. Exceptions, Debugging, and Tracing
  • Week 1. In Review
  • Week 2: At a Glance
  • Day 8. Core Language Concepts in Visual Basic .NET and C#
    • Languages in the .NET Framework
    • Understanding CLS Data Types in Visual Basic .NET and C#
    • Declaring Variables in Visual Basic .NET and C
    • Understanding Operators
    • Using Decision Structures
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Exercises
    • Quiz
  • Day 9. Using Namespaces in .NET
  • Day 10. Accessing Data with ADO.NET
  • Day 11. Understanding Visual Database Tools
  • Day 12. Accessing XML in .NET
  • Day 13. XML Web Services in .NET
  • Day 14. Components and .NET
  • Week 2. In Review
  • Week 3: At a Glance
  • Day 15. Writing International Applications
  • Day 16. Using Macros in Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 17. Automating Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 18. Using Crystal Reports
  • Day 19. Understanding Microsoft Application Center Test
  • Day 20. Using Visual SourceSafe
  • Day 21. Object Role Modeling with Visio
  • Week 3. In Review

Q&A

1. What are the caveats, if any, when working with C# versus Visual Basic .NET?

   Visual Basic .NET is a very developer-friendly language, and many of the features of the language are what make it the most widely used programming language in the world. If you're going to develop in C# and have never programmed in C or Java, remember that the language is case sensitive, statements must be terminated by a semicolon, and expressions must be enclosed in parentheses when they're being evaluated. Other than those three items, the rest should be pretty straightforward as you learn to use the language.

2. I'm looking at the help file for C#, and I see unsigned numbers, such as Uint16 and Uint32. Why didn't you mention them in your discussion on data types?

   I tried to stick with the CLS-compliant data types today. C# supports unsigned integers, which are part of the C# language, but aren't part of the common language specification. That means you can use unsigned numeric data types in your code, but they won't be CLS compliant.

3. You said there was more to learn. Where should I go to get more details about the language specifics of C# or Visual Basic .NET?

   Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic .NET in 21 Days and Sams Teach Yourself C# in 21 Days are good books about the Visual Basic .NET and C# languages. They both cover variables, operators, classes, and objects in most of the first two weeks of lessons. There are many books on the market that have Visual Basic .NET or C# on the cover, but if you decide to buy one, just make sure that it doesn't wrap several major language features into a single lesson. In Sams Teach Yourself C# in 21 Days, each day in the first week is broken down into a major language feature, and the second week covers more advanced object-oriented topics, which I think is great. I highly recommend that book.

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