| This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the C# programming language introduced by Microsoft with the first official release in February 2002. C# is part of a much larger project called .NET, which provides a vast library of classes allowing software developers to create applications to meet almost any need in the industrial and research areas.
A prospective reader of this book will no doubt want to know what is expected of him or her. As the title implies, this book is written primarily for readers who have some (but not necessarily a lot of) programming experience using Java, such as might be gained from an introductory programming course. At the moment, Java is a very popular language in such courses at colleges and universities worldwide, due to its clean structure and relatively shallow learning curve.
However, readers who have some experience with object-oriented programming in other languages such as C++ should also be able to follow the book, as although in the early chapters there are numerous comparisons with Java, the material on C# itself does not actually depend on the reader understanding Java code specifically.
Those of you who have glanced at the table of contents will notice that the later chapters in the book deal with topics such as graphics, databases and so on, and may wonder if they will be able to understand the material in them. This book assumes no prior knowledge of any of these topics, so you should be confident that the material here will be accessible. Most introductory courses are taught using only programs that produce textual output, since dealing with graphical interfaces involves concepts that beginners find rather daunting. |
