• Use the Visual Studio 2005 programming environment.

• Create a C# console application.

• Use namespaces.

• Create a C# Windows Forms application.

Microsoft Visual C# is Microsoft's powerful, component-oriented language. C# plays an important role in the architecture of the Microsoft .NET Framework, and some people have drawn comparisons to the role that C played in the development of UNIX. If you already know a language such as C, C++, or Java, you'll find the syntax of C# reassuringly familiar because it uses the same curly brackets to delimit blocks of code. However, if you are used to programming in other languages, you should soon be able to pick up the syntax and feel of C#; you just need to learn to put the curly brackets and semi-colons in the right place. Hopefully this is just the book to help you!

In Part I, you'll learn the fundamentals of C#. You'll discover how to declare variables and how to use operators such as plus (+) and minus (-) to create values. You'll see how to write methods and pass arguments to methods. You'll also learn how to use selection statements such as if and iteration statements such as while. Finally, you'll understand how C# uses exceptions to handle errors in a graceful, easy-to-use manner. These topics form the core of C#, and from this solid foundation, you'll progress to more advanced features in Part II through Part VI.