1.16. Summary
In this chapter, we discussed some of the advantages of C#, including the following:
C# is an intuitive OOPL that improves upon many languages that preceded it.
C# was designed from the ground up to be fully object-oriented.
C# is part of (and thus has access to the power of) Microsoft's .NET Framework.
C# can be downloaded for free from the MSDN web site.
NOTE
Of course, we haven't sung all of C#'s praises in this chapter; there are many other features that make C# a powerful OOPL that we'll cover in subsequent chapters.
In addition to exploring some of the advantages of C#, we also introduced you to some basic elements of C# syntax. In particular, we did the following in this chapter:
Presented the anatomy of a simple C# program
Discussed the predefined simple types and the string type
Examined how value type variables are declared and initialized
Introduced how a value of one type can be cast into a different type
Discussed arithmetic, assignment, and logical expressions
Presented loops and other flow of control structures available with C#
Explored how to define blocks of code and the concept of variable scope
Learned how to print text messages to the console with the Write and WriteLine methods
Discussed some basic elements of good C# programming style
There's a lot more to learn about C#—things you'll need to know in building the SRS application in Part Three of the book—but we need to explain a number of basic object concepts first. So, on to Chapter 2!