2.0 Introduction

Procedural or structured programming languages such as C are designed to manipulate data and control program flow through the various functions that are written for an application. Such a language uses a verb metaphor in which the main programming logic is performed through a series of actions on the data. Object-oriented programming languages, on the other hand, still use actions but place the objects at a higher place level. Rather than work within an action- or verb-oriented environment, it uses an object- or noun-based model. So rather than say something like, "Do this action first, and with the result, do this other action," object-oriented programs prefer, "Take this object and tell it to do this action, and based on what that object does, notify a different object so it can react accordingly .

This chapter takes a look at how Visual C# .NET uses object-oriented programming principles coupled with the design and implementation of the .NET Framework to create a rich set of objects that you can create or further expand to solve myriad programming tasks . The first concept to discuss is the cornerstone of objects, the class. Later you'll see how to manipulate the behaviors of these objects to conform and interact with whatever programming problem you face.