You are new to .NET world and want to explore it, want to pursue your career in it? This is the course to begin with.
Prerequisites:
- You should have some hands on programming experience
- Passion of Learning
Time to Complete: 70 mins
1- Introduction to .NET Framework
A framework provides you “generic” functionalities to help you in development. It provides you guidelines to follow. .NET Framework is a Software framework. Its main components are
1) Base Class Library (A collection of thousands of classes)
2) CLR (Common Language Runtime): It manages execution of your program
2- .NET Framework & Visual Studio
An IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is a tool in which you can do different types of development at one place. There are different development frameworks but what makes development with .NET framework interesting is its IDE. Microsoft Visual Studio is a powerful IDE and without it, .NET framework would have lost its worth. In this video, we’ll see history of Visual Studio quickly. Later we’ll see how we can do development in it.
3- What is Assembly and how compilation works?
CPU only understands machine language (binary). When you use a High level language, compiler of that language verifies the syntax and converts the code into machine language. In computing terms, a “platform” is environment (e.g. hardware, software, OS) where you program is executed. C++ is called “platform” dependent. When you compile C++ code, its compiled code can only be executed only on that “platform” where it was compiled. It keeps “platform” specification in consideration while generating machine code.
Now on the other hand, Java/.NET uses another approach. They don’t compile code directly to machine code but they compile code to an “intermediate language” which is “platform” independent. And then they have “run-times” for different platforms. JVM (Java Virtual Machine), CLR (Common Language Run-time). These “run-times” understand that Intermediate language & the “underlying” platform. So they convert the “intermediate” code into “machine” code on the fly.
This video discusses these concepts quickly
4- What is CLR (Common Language Run-time)?
CLR is core component of .NET Framework. It is basically responsible of converting your “intermediate” code into machine code on the fly. It uses JIT (Just In Time Compiler) for this purpose. In short, It is managing overall execution of your MSIL code.
In this video, we’ll explore CLR
5- What is is Visual Studio?
In this video, we’ll learn how to work with Microsoft Visual Studio. Beginners should watch full video
Topics:
How to create a project in Visual Studio
How to add a reference of .NET Assembly
How to add a “Class Library” Project
How to add reference of Class Library Project in other Project
What is Namespace
Debugging
Solution Explorer, Properties Window, Toolbox
6- Global Assembly Cache (GAC), Call by Value vs. Call by Reference
When you install .NET Framework version, Microsoft stores all its assemblies in a folder we call GAC (Global Assembly Cache). So if multiple applications are going to use your “assemblies” on client machine, you can even add your assemblies in GAC and all applications can refer from there.
Object is base class in .NET. If your class doesn’t inherit from any class, it will be inheriting from “Object” class by default.
mscorlib.dll (Microsoft Common Runtime Library) is core assembly of .NET Framework. It contains the basic types e.g. Int32, Int16, Boolean etc. etc.
When you pass primitive types while calling a function, values are passed “By Value” but when you pass non-primitive types, values are passed “By Reference”.
Following video discusses these concepts in .NET Framework + Visual Studio