Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 31 October 2014
Part 1 of this series on Basic Programming in Visual C# explains how to get up and running the Microsoft Visual Studio. You'll discover how to obtain a free edition of Visual Studio and install it on your machine. The video also shows you how to work in the Visual Studio IDE including tips for configuring the appearance of the application and how to work with the various Visual Studio windows.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 31 October 2014
The second part of this series on Basic Programming in Visual C# explains how to work with projects and solutions. You'll learn how to create a new Windows Forms Application and how to use the Solution Explorer window to work with the items contained in the project. You'll also learn how to add and remove items in a project, how to create folders to organise items and what happens when you rename things in a project.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 31 October 2014
Part 3 of the Basic Programming in Visual C# series shows you how to create basic Windows Forms. You'll learn about the Toolbox and how to add controls to a form. The video also teaches you various techniques for aligning and distributing controls to create a professional-looking layout. You'll learn about form and control properties to alter the appearance and behaviour of your forms, and also how to run your application to test that everything works correctly.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 31 October 2014
Part 4 of the Basic Programming in Visual C# series shows you how to get started with writing very simple C# code. You'll learn about how to attach code to the events of a form using event handlers and how to write simple instructions using the IntelliSense list. You'll learn the basics of some important C# keywords such as Namespace, Class, Object, Method and Property and begin to understand how those things define the code that you write.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 31 October 2014
This part of the Basic Programming in Visual C# series explains how to use variables - an integral part of any programming language. You'll learn how to declare a variable and choose its data type, how to assign values to and read from a variable and how to initialise a variable. You'll learn about working with different data types such as strings, numbers and dates and understand the importance of type-casting and converting data types.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 31 October 2014
If statements allow your code to perform different actions depending on whether or not conditions have been met. Part 6 of this series on Programming in Visual C# shows you how to write if statements and logical tests, how to perform multiple actions based on the result and how to include an else statement. You'll learn how to write nested, or cascading, ifs using a couple of different layouts, and you'll see how to use code snippets to save time when writing if statements. Towards the end of the tutorial you'll see how to test multiple conditions using compound operators and, finally, how to use the logical operator to write concise logical tests.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 03 November 2014
Methods are a fundamental building block of C# programming. This video teaches you how to create your own methods, including how to specify what the method will return, how to define mandatory and optional parameters and how to create overloaded methods. You'll learn how to call methods from other procedures and how to pass arguments to the parameters of a method.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 03 November 2014
A C# Switch Statement allows you to test if a value falls into one of a number of discrete categories. This video teaches you how to write simple Switch statements including how to add case labels, how to use the default case, several techniques to avoid falling-through cases and how to assign multiple labels to the same block of statements.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 17 November 2014
A While Loop in C# allows your code to repeat a set of instructions while a condition is met. This video starts by teaching you how to write a basic While statement and moves on to explain how to avoid endless loops, how to break out of a loop, how to continue to the next iteration of the loop and also how to use the Do statement to change where your condition is evaluated. The second half of the video demonstrates how to use While loops in a practical context by looping over the lines of a text file - as a bonus you'll learn a little about StreamReaders and how to use basic arrays too!
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 18 November 2014
For Loops in C#, along with While Loops, represent a technique for looping a set of instructions while a condition is met. This video teaches you how to write For Loops, starting with the basic syntax of the For statement. You'll see how to break out of and how to continue a loop, as well as how to avoid endless loops. After learning the basics you'll see how to apply the for loop in a practical context by looping over both all of the items in a list box as well as just the selected items.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 21 November 2014
You can use a Foreach loop in C# to process a collection of objects, which is a tremendously useful thing to be able to do in an object-oriented language! This video explains how the foreach statement works and covers examples such as looping over the collection of controls in a form, looping over the open forms in your application and looping over the items in a list. You'll also see a comparison of the foreach loop and for loop, including a couple of limitations of the foreach statement. The video also covers how to write nested foreach loops.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 27 November 2014
This part of the Introduction to Visual C# series teaches you how to use arrays. You'll learn how to declare and set the dimensions of an array, how to initialise and change values in an array and how to read values from an array. You'll also see how to loop through an array using three different types of loop, as well as how to sort arrays and search an array for a particular value. Later in the video you'll learn how to work with multidimensional arrays and also find out how to resize an array (although this isn't something you should really be doing!).
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 01 December 2014
A List is similar to an Array, in that it allows you to store multiple items under a single variable name. The advantage of using lists is that they're designed to change their size dynamically as you add items to them. This video teaches you how to work with lists including how to declare, initialise and add items to them. You'll see several techniques for looping over the items in a list, including while loops, for loops and foreach loops. You'll also learn how to remove and find items in a list, including how to write basic Lambda expressions.
Posted by
Andrew Gould
on 26 October 2015
Exceptions occur when something goes wrong when your code is running. If you don't write code to handle these exceptions your program crashes and users become angry and/or upset! This video teaches you the basics of handling exceptions in Visual C# using Try Catch statements. It shows how to test for different exception types, how to write multiple Catch blocks to handle specific types of exception and how to use a Finally statement at the end of a Try Catch block.
