Programming C# 12

Chapter 2. Basic Coding in C#

All programming languages have to provide certain capabilities. It must be possible to express the calculations and operations that our code should perform. Programs need to be able to make decisions based on their input. Sometimes we will need to perform tasks repeatedly. These fundamental features are the very stuff of programming, and this chapter will show how these things work in C#.

Depending on your background, some of this chapter’s content may seem very familiar. C# is said to be from the “C family” of languages. C is a hugely influential programming language, and numerous languages have borrowed much of its syntax. There are direct descendants, such as C++ and Objective-C. There are also more distantly related languages, including Java, JavaScript, and C# itself, that have no compatibility with C but that still copy many aspects of its syntax. If you are familiar with any of these languages, you will recognize many of the language features we are about to explore.

We saw the basic elements of a program in Chapter 1. In this chapter, we will be looking just at code inside methods. As you’ve seen, C# requires a certain amount of structure: code is made up of statements that live inside a method, which belongs to a type, which is typically inside a namespace, all inside a file that is part of a project, typically contained by a solution. In the special case of a program’s entry point, the containing method and type might be hidden thanks to ...