C# Introduction

Hours: 32 / Access Length: 7 Weeks / Delivery: Monthly, Mentor Supported
Retail Price: $375.00

Course Overview:

You will be introduced to the concepts of Object-oriented programming using C#. Students will learn the fundamentals of .NET programming as they create C# applications. You will create applications that use variables, conditional statements, looping statements, arrays and function. No programming background is required for this course. You will need Visual Studio Community 2015 (free download here) to follow along with the course content.  

Students will:

• Compile and run a basic C# program.
• Write C# application that uses labels, text fields and buttons on a form.
• Write C# code that uses numeric and string data in variables.
• Write C# application that use conditional statement and loops.
• Write C# code that includes methods and event handlers.
• Will write C# code that handles exceptions and validates data.
• Write C# applications that use arrays, and other data collection storage tools.
• Write C# applications that use date and string variables.
• Add standard controls to their C# projects and create a mult-form application.
• Create a final project using what they've learned in this course.

Course Mentor:

Rita Harwell was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas.  She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas, and a Master’s degree from the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri.  In addition, she studied Computer Science at North Carolina State University.  Ms. Harwell has taught computer programming at Wake Technical Community College for 14 years.  She developed a passion for database programming and programmed in Visual Basic, Perl, C#, and C++ primarily developing medical software.

Mrs. Harwell’s personal passions are for horses, bicycling, and GeoCaching.

Course Outline:

Lesson 1: Getting Started

This lesson will give you a chance to get Visual Studio ready to begin programming and give you a chance to get familiar with the development environment.

Lesson 2: Creating a C# Application

In Lesson 1 we got familiar with the programming environment and learned a little bit about how C# applications are put together. In this lesson we will get started with creating our own C# application. We will learn to build a new project. Then we will add some controls to a form and create some code to make the controls work. We will end this lesson by building and running the project. Some say this is the most difficult part of creating an application. Little things like syntax errors can trip you up. Once the program is running logic errors can cause unexpected results.

Lesson 3: Numeric and String Data

In the last lesson we built a form and began writing some of the code behind the controls. In this lesson and the next we will focus on the basic of the C# programming language. If you have programmed in other languages the concepts will be familiar to you but the syntax may be different. If you know C, C++ or Java a lot of this will look familiar to you, but take the time to read through the text and work the examples because there are some differences. We will work with the built-in data types C# offers and explore the structures C# uses to add functionality to the basic data types, like being able to convert from one type to another. We will also explore constants and enumerations.

Lesson 4: Conditional Statements and Loops

In this lesson we will look at conditional and looping statements as a way to control the flow of our programs. Conditional statements like if and switch allow us to execute a section of code based on a condition being true. Looping statements, like while and for, allow us to repeat sections of code.

Lesson 5: Methods and Event Handlers

We are starting on our way to building more complicated applications in C# in this lesson. We will take a look at building methods. Methods provide us a way of creating reusable modules of code and helps us to build more structured programs. We will also revisit event handling and see ways we can create custom event handlers for our application.

Lesson 6: Handling Exceptions and Validating Data

In this lesson we will take a look at making our programs more robust but learning how to gracefully handle unexpected exceptions and how to make sure the data we get from the user are valid.

Lesson 7: Arrays and Collections

In this lesson we will look at several different ways C# has to store and work with collections of data.

Lesson 8: Dates and Strings

We worked with Strings in an earlier lesson, but we will take a deeper look at the String class and its functions in this lesson. One big issue is the fact that the String class is immutable, meaning that to make a change to a string we have to create a whole new string. The StringBuilder class will allow us to make changes directly to a string without having to save it to a new string. We will also work with the DateTime structure and revisit String formatting. We saw how to use the standard formatting options. In this lesson we will learn to create custom format definitions.

Lesson 9: Windows Forms and Controls

We have worked with just some of the basic Windows form controls up until now and our applications have had just one form. In this lesson we will learn to use some of the more common form controls and to add forms to our projects. While we have not covered all the controls that are available in C#, we have covered enough to give you a good idea of what is involved in using controls. Feel free in this lesson to explore beyond the checkbox, radio button, list box and combo box controls covered in this lesson. We will also be adding forms to our projects. These forms may work along side the forms we already have or may serve as dialog boxes where we can prompt the user for information before continuing our programs.

All necessary materials are included.

System Requirements:

• Cable and DSL internet connections are recommended for the best experience.

• CPU: 1 GHz or higher
• RAM: 2 GB or higher
• Resolution: 1280 x 720 or higher
• Speakers / Headphones
• Microphone (Webinar / Live Online sessions)

• Microsoft Windows 7 or 10 (Home, Pro)
• Mac OSX 10 or higher.
• Latest Chrome OS
• Latest Linux Distributions

NOTE: While we understand that our courses can be viewed on Android and iPhone devices, we do not recommend the use of these devices for our courses. The size of these devices do not provide a good learning environment for students taking online or live online based courses.

• Latest Google Chrome is recommended for the best experience.
• Latest Mozilla FireFox
• Latest Microsoft Edge
• Latest Apple Safari

• Office suite software (Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or LibreOffice)
• PDF reader program (Adobe Reader, FoxIt)
• Courses may require other software that is denoted in the above course outline.