Professional C# 2012 and .NET 4.5

Book Preface

IF YOU WERE TO DESCRIBE THE C# LANGUAGE and its associated environment, the .NET Framework, as the most signifi cant technology for developers available, you would not be exaggerating. .NET is designed to provide an environment within which you can develop almost any application to run on Windows, whereas C# is a programming language designed specifi cally to work with the .NET Framework. By using C#, you can, for example, write a dynamic web page, a Windows Presentation Foundation application, an XML web service, a component of a distributed application, a database access component, a classic Windows desktop application, or even a new smart client application that enables online and offl ine capabilities. This book covers the .NET Framework 4.5. If you code using any of the prior versions, there may be sections of the book that will not work for you. This book notifi es you of items that are new and specifi c to the .NET Framework 4.5.

Don’t be fooled by the .NET label in the Framework’s name and think that this is a purely an Internetfocused framework. The NET bit in the name is there to emphasize Microsoft’s belief that distributed applications, in which the processing is distributed between client and server, are the way forward. You must also understand that C# is not just a language for writing Internet or network-aware applications. It provides a means for you to code almost any type of software or component that you need to write for the Windows platform. Between them, C# and .NET have revolutionized the way that developers write their programs and have made programming on Windows much easier than it has ever been before. So what’s the big deal about .NET and C#?