Organization of This Book

Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2005: The Language is organized into five parts.

The first part, "Core Language," introduces the basic concepts of the language. Chapter 1 contains a general overview of the language. Chapter 2 introduces types, which include classes and value types. Chapter 3 explains inheritance in C# and the related keywords, such as virtual, override, sealed, and abstract.

The second part, "Core Skills," covers the core skills required to create a C# application. Chapter 4 reviews Visual Studio 2005, which is the central tool in developing a managed application. Chapter 5 explains arrays and collections. It is hard to imagine a competent C# application that does not employ arrays or collections. Chapter 6 introduces generics, which is a new feature of .NET Framework 2.0. Chapter 7 pertains to iterators and the capability to enumerate collection-related classes.

The third part, "More C# Language," focuses on additional language features. Chapter 8 details managed function pointers, which are represented by delegates and events in managed code. Chapter 9 explains structured exception handling in the run time and within the C# language.

The fourth part, "Debugging," is an all-inclusive explanation of debugging managed code. The first two chapters in this section provide an internal view of an assembly, which is critical for anyone debugging a managed application: Chapter 10 introduces metadata and reflection; Chapter 11 is an overview of Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) programming. Chapter 12 discusses debugging with Visual Studio, which is the preferred debugging environment for most developers. Finally, Chapter 13 discusses advanced debugging using the MDbg, Windbg, and SOS debugger extensions.

The final part is "Advanced Concepts." Chapter 14 covers managed memory and garbage collection in the managed environment. Chapter 15 explains unsafe code and direct pointer manipulation. This chapter also discusses calling functions that are in unmanaged (native) libraries.