In the summer of 2000, Microsoft released C# 1.0, which together with the .NET Framework, represented a major change in the way Windows applications and web applications were to be built.
In November 2005, Microsoft released C# 2.0, also known as C# 2005, and an upgraded platform, class library, and set of tools, including Visual Studio 2005. Throughout this book, we’ll refer to C# 2.0 as C# 2005. Although not quite as revolutionary a step as the launch of .NET itself, 2.0 represents a significant maturation of the .NET platform and of the C# language, along with greatly enhanced tools to significantly increase programmer productivity.
Learning C# 2005, Second Edition is a primer on the C# 2005 language specifically, and object-oriented software development in general. This book focuses on the fundamentals of the C# programming language, both syntactical and semantic. After mastering these concepts, you should be ready to move on to a more advanced programming guide that will help you create large-scale web and Windows applications.