C# core syllabus for beginners or advanced learners

Introduction to C#

• Overview of C# and its history
• Features of C#
• Setting up the development environment:
• Installing Visual Studio/Visual Studio Code
• Creating your first C# project

Basics of C#

• Structure of a C# program
• Syntax and coding conventions
• Data types:
  • Value types (int, float, bool, etc.)
  • Reference types (string, object)
• Variables and constants
• Type casting and conversions

Control Flow

• Conditional statements:

  • If, else if, else: To make decisions in code.
  • Switch: To simplify multi-condition checks.

• Loops:

  • For, while, do-while: For repetitive tasks.
  • Foreach: To iterate over collections.

• Jump statements:

  • break to exit a loop

  • continue to skip the current iteration

  • return to exit a method.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

• Classes and objects
• Fields, properties, and methods
• Constructors and destructors
• Encapsulation:
• Access modifiers (public, private, protected, internal)
• Inheritance
• Polymorphism:
• Method overloading and overriding
• Abstract classes and interfaces
• Static classes and members

Collections and Generics

• Arrays: Fixed-size containers for storing data of the same type.
• Collections:
  • List, Dictionary, Queue, Stack, etc., for dynamic data storage.
• Working with generics: Create type-safe classes and methods using <T> syntax.
• Iterators and the foreach loop: Learn how to traverse collections using foreach.

Exception Handling

• Understanding exceptions: Errors during runtime, such as dividing by zero or accessing null objects.
• try, catch, finally blocks:
  • try: Block where you expect an error.
  • catch: Handles errors.
  • finally: execute code no matter what.
• Throwing exceptions: Use the throw keyword to create custom error messages.
• Custom exceptions: Define your exception classes for specific error handling.

Delegates and Events

• What are delegates?: Delegates are pointers to methods, enabling dynamic method calls.
• Creating and using delegates: Learn how to define and invoke delegates.
• Multicast delegates: Combine multiple methods into a single delegate.
• Events and event handling: Understand the observer pattern, where events notify subscribers when something happens.
• Anonymous methods and lambdas: Simplify code with inline methods using => syntax.

LINQ (Language Integrated Query)

• Introduction to LINQ
• LINQ syntax and queries
• Filtering, sorting, and grouping data
• LINQ with collections and databases

Asynchronous Programming

• Introduction to asynchronous programming: Perform multiple tasks without blocking the main thread.
• Understanding async and await: Simplify async code with these keywords.
• Tasks and Task Parallel Library (TPL): Use Task for concurrent operations.
• Handling async exceptions: Manage errors in asynchronous code with proper exception handling.

File Handling

• Working with files and directories: Create, delete, and manage files and folders.
• Reading from and writing to files: Use classes like StreamReader and StreamWriter.
• FileStream: Work with streams to read/write large files.
• Serialization and deserialization: Convert objects to and from formats like JSON or XML.

Advanced Topics

• Reflection: Inspect and manipulate code at runtime.
• Attributes: Add metadata to your code for additional functionality.
• Dynamic types: Use dynamic for flexibility when type safety is not required.
• Dependency Injection (DI): Decouple components for better testability and maintainability.

Working with Databases

• Introduction to ADO.NET: Low-level database access using SQL queries.
• Connecting to a database: Use SqlConnection to establish connections.
• Executing SQL queries: Use SqlCommand for CRUD operations.