Audience and Organization

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This book is targeted toward those who have little or no programming experience. The book has been structured and written with a purpose, and that is to get you productive as quickly and as smoothly as possible. I've used my experiences from writing large commercial applications to create a book that, hopefully, cuts through the fluff and teaches you what you need to know. All too often, authors fall into the trap of focusing on the technology rather than on the practical application of the technology. I've worked hard to keep this book focused on teaching you practical skills that you can apply immediately toward a development project. Please feel free to send me your suggestions or success stories at [e-mail].

This book is divided into five parts, each of which focuses on a different aspect of developing applications with C#. These parts generally follow the flow of tasks you'll perform as you begin creating your own programs using C#. I recommend that you read them in the order in which they appear.

• Part I The Visual Studio Environment teaches you about the Visual Studio's C# development environment, including how to navigate and access ' numerous tools. In addition, you'll learn some key development concepts such as objects, collections, and events.

• Part II Building a User Interface shows you how to build attractive and functional user interfaces. In this part, you'll learn about forms and controls ”the user-interface elements such as text boxes and list boxes.

• Part III Making Things Happen ”Programming! teaches you the nuts and bolts of C# programming ”and there's a lot to learn. You'll discover how to create methods , as well has how to store data, perform loops , and make decisions in code. After you've learned the core programming skills, you'll move into object-oriented programming and debugging applications.

• Part IV Working with Data introduces you to working with a database and shows you how to automate external applications such as Word and Excel. In addition, this part teaches you how to manipulate a user's file system.

• Part V Deploying Solutions and Beyond shows you how to distribute an application that you've created to an end user's computer. Then, the focus is brought back a bit to take a look at Web programming and Microsoft's .NET initiative from a higher, less-technical level.

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