Sams Teach Yourself C# in 24 Hours

By James Foxall and Wendy Haro-Chun

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Audience and Organization
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Onward and Upward!
  • Part I. The Visual Studio Environment
  • Hour 1. A C# Programming Tour
  • Hour 2. Navigating C#
  • Hour 3. Understanding Objects and Collections
  • Hour 4. Understanding Events
  • Part II. Building a User Interface
  • Hour 5. Building FormsPart I
  • Hour 6. Building FormsPart II
  • Hour 7. Working with the Traditional Controls
  • Hour 8. Advanced Controls
  • Hour 9. Adding Menus and Toolbars to Forms
  • Hour 10. Drawing and Printing
  • Part III. Making Things HappenProgramming!
  • Hour 11. Creating and Calling Methods
  • Hour 12. Using Constants, Data Types, Variables, and Arrays
    • Understanding Data Types
    • Defining and Using Constants
    • Declaring and Referencing Variables
    • Determining Scope
    • Naming Conventions
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 13. Performing Arithmetic, String Manipulation, and Date/Time Adjustments
  • Hour 14. Making Decisions in C# Code
  • Hour 15. Looping for Efficiency
  • Hour 16. Debugging Your Code
  • Hour 17. Designing Objects Using Classes
  • Hour 18. Interacting with Users
  • Part IV. Working with Data
  • Hour 19. Performing File Operations
  • Hour 20. Controlling Other Applications Using Automation
  • Hour 21. Working with a Database
  • Part V. Deploying Solutions and Beyond
  • Hour 22. Deploying a Solution
  • Hour 23. Introduction to Web Development
  • Hour 24. The 10,000-Foot View
  • Appendix A. Answers to Quizzes/Exercises

Q&A

1. Are any performance tricks related to the many data types?

   One trick when using whole numbers (values with no decimal places) is to use the data type that matches your processor. For instance, most current home and office computers have 32-bit processors. The C# integer data type is made up of 32 bits. Believe it or not, C# can process an integer variable faster than it can process a short variable, even though the short variable is smaller. This has to do with the architecture of the CPU, memory, and bus. The explanation is complicated, but the end result is that you should usually use integer rather than short, even when working with values that don't require the larger size of the integer.

2. Are arrays limited to two dimensions?

   Although I showed only two dimensions (that is, intMeasurements[3,1]), arrays can have many dimensions, such as intMeasurements[3,3,3,4]. The technical maximum is 60 dimensions, but you probably won't use more than three.

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