Friday, May 7, 2010

Learning C sharp basics

INTRODUCTION

Microsoft Visual C# is a powerful but simple language aimed primarily at developers creating
applications by using the Microsoft .NET Framework. It inherits many of the best features of
C++ and Microsoft Visual Basic, but few of the inconsistencies and anachronisms, resulting
in a cleaner and more logical language. C# 1.0 made its public debut in 2001. The advent of
C# 2.0 with Visual Studio 2005 saw several important new features added to the language,
including Generics, Iterators, and anonymous methods. C# 3.0 which was released with
Visual Studio 2008, added extension methods, lambda expressions, and most famously of
all, the Language Integrated Query facility, or LINQ. The latest incarnation of the language,
C# 4.0, provides further enhancements that improve its interoperability with other languages
and technologies. These features include support for named and optional arguments, the
dynamic type which indicates that the language runtime should implement late binding for
an object, and variance which resolves some issues in the way in which generic interfaces are
defined. C# 4.0 takes advantage of the latest version of the .NET Framework, also version
4.0. There are many additions to the .NET Framework in this release, but arguably the most
significant are the classes and types that constitute the Task Parallel Library (TPL). Using the
TPL, you can now build highly scalable applications that can take full advantage of multi-core
processors quickly and easily. The support for Web services and Windows Communication
Foundation (WCF) has also been extended; you can now build services that follow the REST
model as well as the more traditional SOAP scheme.
The development environment provided by Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 makes all these
powerful features easy to use, and the many new wizards and enhancements included in
Visual Studio 2010 can greatly improve your productivity as a developer.