Ultimate C# Masterclass - List of topics

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C# Fundamentals
Our first C# program
● How to create C# projects
● What IDE is
● What comments are
● How to print messages to the console
● How to configure the options of Visual Studio

From a text file to an executable program

● What compilation is
● What the program performing it is called (compiler)
● What the compilation result is
● What *.dll files are

Programmer's most important skill

● What the most important skill of any programmer is
● What to do when our programs don't work as expected
● What StackOverflow is

Variables
● What variables are
● What int and string types are
● What the variable’s declaration and initialization are, and what the difference between
them is
● The shortcut that duplicates a line of code
Naming variables & introduction to clean code
● How to name variables
● What reserved keywords are, and how to use them as variable names
● Why clean code is important
● Shortcut for renaming elements in code

Operators
● The most basic C# operators ( +, -, *, /, + +, - - )
● What operators precedence is

Implicitly typed variables

● The purpose of the var keyword
● What implicitly and explicitly typed variables are

User input
● How to read user input from the console
● What code snippets are
● What the role of warnings is

Debugging with breakpoints

● How to use breakpoints to debug a program
● What QuickWatch window is and how to use it

Comments
● How to add single-line and multiline comments to our code
● Shortcuts for commenting and uncommenting the code
● How to write in multiple lines at once

Boolean type. Logical negation, equality, comparison, and modulo

operators
● New type: bool
● ==, !=, !, >, >=, <, <=, % operators
AND (&&) and OR (||) logical operators
● AND (&&) and OR (||) logical operators
● What short-circuiting optimization is
● In what order we should put logical expressions
● How to name boolean variables

if/else conditional statement

● if/else conditional statements

Scope
● What scopes are
● Where particular variables can be used and where they can not
● What code blocks are
● What nested if statements are

Methods - part 1 - void methods

● What methods are
● How to define void methods
● The difference between defining the method and calling it
● The difference between method’s parameter and argument

Methods - part 2 - non-void methods

● How to define non-void methods
● What the purpose of the return keyword is
● How to debug methods
● Under what circumstances we can remove the else following the if
● How to use Quick Actions and Refactorings menu
● What code refactoring is

Methods - part 3 - parameters types and the return type. Static typing in C#
● The difference between statically and dynamically typed programming languages
● How to use the correct types of method parameters and the return type
● The difference between runtime errors and compilation errors
Parsing a string to an int (int.Parse method)
● What parsing is
● How to convert a string to an int using the int.Parse method

The first exception

● What exceptions are

Adding a new project to a solution

● How to add more than one project to a solution
● How to switch between projects

Assignment - Simple Calculator - Solution

● How to perform code refactoring in practice
● How to transform a string to its uppercase version

String interpolation
● What string interpolation is, and how to use it

Switch statement
● What switch statements are
● One of the purposes of the default keyword
● What expressions are

Char
● What chars are

A need for loops

● What loops are and what they are useful for
● What kinds of loops we can define in C#

While loop - part 1

● How to define a while loop
+= and ++ operators. Infinite loops
● +=, *=, ++ operators
● What infinite loops are

While loop - part 1

● How to define a while loop - practice

Do-while loop
● How to define a do-while loop
● The difference between the while and the do-while loops

For loop
● How to define a for loop

Break
● The purpose of the break keyword

Continue
● The purpose of the continue keyword

Nested loops
● What nested loops are

Loops performance
● What the performance of a program is
● How loops can affect the program’s performance
● What we can do to avoid performance degradation when using loops

Arrays
● What arrays are
● The purpose of the index from end operator (^)
● How to easily fill a new array with items using the array initializer
 ● What the greatest disadvantage of arrays is

Multi-dimensional arrays
● What multi-dimensional arrays are

Foreach loop
● How to use the foreach loop

Lists
● What Lists are
● The difference between Lists and arrays
● The most crucial methods we can use with Lists

“out” keyword
● The purpose of the out keyword

TryParse method
● How to parse a string to an int without the risk of a runtime error
● The keyboard shortcut for formatting the code

Assignment - TODO List - Implementation - User options & adding a TODO

● Practice the mechanisms learned in this section

Assignment - TODO List - Implementation - Listing and Removing TODOs

● Practice the mechanisms learned in this section
● How to easily change a foreach loop into a for a loop

Assignment - TODO List - Refactoring

● How to perform code refactoring in practice
● How to easily jump to a method definition
● What the recommended order of methods in a file is
Basics of Object-Oriented Programming
The issues in our code. A need for object-oriented programming
● Why we need object-oriented programming
● What procedural programming is and what problems it can cause
● What an antipattern is
● What spaghetti code antipattern is
● What high-quality code must always be ready for

Introduction to object-oriented programming

● What object-oriented programming is
● What classes, objects and instances are
● What the benefits of object-oriented programming are

Understanding OOP with the DateTime type

● How OOP can be used in practice
● New type: DateTime
● What a constructor is

Abstraction
● What abstraction is
● The benefits of hiding the implementation details from the users of a class

Our first class

● How to define a class
● What the fields of a class are
● What the default values of fields are
● What a default constructor is

Data hiding
● What data hiding is and why using it is a good idea
● What members of a class are
● What access modifiers are
 ● Public and private access modifiers
● What the default access modifier for fields is

Custom constructor
● How to define custom constructors in a class
● What the recommended naming for fields is

C# restriction on code outside classes. Top-level statements

● Whether C# code can be defined outside classes or if it must always be contained within
one
● What top-level statements are

Methods in classes
● How to define methods in classes
● How methods should be named
● The rule of thumb we can use to find out what the default access modifiers in C# are

Encapsulation
● What encapsulation is
● How is encapsulation different from data hiding
● The benefits of using encapsulation

Methods overloading
● What methods overloading is
● What rules we must follow when defining many methods with the same name in a class
● How to quickly create a constructor using Visual Studio

Constructors overloading. Calling one constructor from another

● How to overload constructors
● How to call one constructor from another using the “this” keyword

Expression-bodied methods
● How to make methods shorter by converting them to expression-bodied methods
● The difference between a statement and an expression
"this" keyword (current instance reference)
● How to use the “this” keyword to refer to the current instance of a class

Optional parameters
● How to define optional parameters
● How to set the default value of a parameter

Validation of constructor parameters

● How to validate the constructor parameters
● The purpose of the nameof expression
● Why having public fields is risky

Readonly and const

● How to prevent a field from being modified
● What immutable objects are
● The difference between readonly and const

Limitations of fields. A need for properties

● The limitations of fields
● How can those limitations be addressed using methods
● Why we need properties

Properties
● What properties are
● What a backing field of a property is
● What accessors are
● What the differences between fields and properties are
● When should we use fields, and when properties

Object initializer
● What object initializers are
● The purpose of the init accessor
Computed properties
● How to create computed properties
● When to use parameterless methods, and when computed properties

Static methods and classes

● What static methods are
● What static classes are
● What are the limitations of static methods
● Why all const fields are implicitly static

Static fields, properties and constructors

● What static fields and properties are
● What a static constructor is
● Whether using static fields and properties is a good or bad practice

Single Responsibility Principle - introduction

● What the Single Responsibility Principle is (S in SOLID)
● What SOLID principles are
● How to read from and write to a text file

Single Responsibility Principle - refactoring (part 1)

● How to perform step-by-step refactoring of a class, so it meets the Single Responsibility
Principle
● What a repository is
● What the new line symbol for Unix and non-Unix systems is

Single Responsibility Principle - refactoring (part 2)

● What is the recommended order of methods in a class
● What is the risk of having some properties public, even only for getting

Single Responsibility Principle - refactoring (part 3)

● What the DRY principle is
● When code duplications are not a bad thing
Files, namespaces, usings
● How to add new files to a project
● How to move classes to their own files
● What namespaces are
● What using directives are
● What file-scoped namespace declarations are

Global using directives

● What global using directives are
● How to measure the time of code execution

Assignment - Dice Roll Game - Random

● How to generate pseudorandom numbers
● What the seed of the pseudorandom numbers generator is
● What a dependency of a class is

Assignment - Dice Roll Game - Magic Number antipattern

● What the magic number antipattern is and how to avoid it

Assignment - Dice Roll Game - Designing classes

● How to create a neat classes design in practice

Assignment - Dice Roll Game - Enums

● What enum types are and how to declare them
● What the underlying type of enums is
● What casting is

Assignment - Dice Roll Game - Ternary conditional operator

● How to use the ternary conditional operator
● How to logically place types in namespaces
Object-Oriented Programming: Polymorphism,
Inheritance, Interfaces

A need for polymorphism

● Why do we sometimes need to manipulate different types in an uniform way
● What polymorphism is

Inheritance
● What inheritance is
● What kind of relationship it creates between types
● What base classes and derived classes are

Inheriting members from the base class. Protected access modifier

● How to make base class members accessible in the derived class
● The purpose of the protected access modifier

Overriding members from the base class. Virtual methods and properties
● How to override the implementation of the method or a property from a base class in the
derived classes
● What virtual methods and properties are
● What method hiding is

Virtual methods - practice

● How to use virtual methods in practice

A deeper inheritance hierarchy

● In this video, we will learn How to define an inheritance hierarchy of more than two
classes.
Multiple inheritance
● Why in C# a class cannot derive directly from more than one base class
● What the diamond problem is

System.Object and the ToString method

● What the System.Object class is and what method it contains
● What the ToString method is and what its basic implementation is

Inheriting constructors and the "base" keyword

● If the base class constructor is called when a derived class object is created
● How to create constructors that set the state defined in both the base type and the
derived type
● The purpose of the “base” keyword

Implicit conversion
● What implicit conversion is
● New types: decimal and double

Explicit conversion
● What explicit conversion is
● What problems may it cause

Upcasting and downcasting

● The difference between upcasting and downcasting
● Which of them is risky

“is” operator
● The purpose of the “is” operator

Null
● What null is
“as” operator
● The purpose of the “as” operator
● “as” operator limitations
● The difference between conversion with the cast expression, and with the “as” operator

Abstract classes
● How to prevent a class from being instantiated
● What abstract classes are

Abstract methods
● What abstract methods and properties are

A need for abstract methods

● Why we need abstract methods
● The difference between abstract and non-abstract virtual methods

Sealed classes and methods

● What sealed classes and methods are
● What the reasons for sealing classes and methods may be

Static classes are always sealed

● Why static classes are implicitly sealed
● Why overriding of static methods is not possible

Extension methods
● How to define extension methods
● How to create multiline string literals

A need for interfaces

● Under what circumstances using an abstract class as a base type is not a good idea
● Why we need interfaces
Interfaces
● What interfaces are
● What kind of relationship they create between types

Interfaces vs abstract classes

● What the differences between interfaces and abstract classes are

JSON
● What JSON and XML are
● How to serialize a C# object to JSON format, and how to deserialize JSON string to a c#
object
● How to escape the quote character in a string

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - High-level design

● How to define the high-level logic of the application
● How to easily create well-designed interfaces

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Dependency Inversion and Dependency

Injection
● What the Dependency Inversion Principle is (D in SOLID)
● What Dependency Injection is, and how it is different from Dependency Inversion
● What coupling is
● What target-typed new expressions are

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Designing data types

● What generic types and methods are
● What the IEnumerable interface is
● How to reduce code repetition between related types in practice

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Printing data object. LINQ.

● What LINQ is
● How to access the index of the current iteration in a foreach loop
Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Printing the ingredients
● How to create a basic storage class for objects of a given type

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Composing the recipe by the user

● How to find an item in a collection by one of its properties

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Reading and writing from and to a *.txt

file
● How to implement reading from and writing to a *.txt file

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Reading and writing from and to a *.json

file
● How to implement reading from and writing to a *.json file

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Template Method Design Pattern

● What the Template Method design pattern is, and how to use it in practice

Assignment - Cookies Cookbook - Cleanup and project organizing

● How to organize a project into namespaces in practice
● How to apply some action in the Visual Studio for the entire project
Exceptions and error handling

Exception object
● What exceptions are
● What the System.Exception class is and what data it contains
● How to see detailed information about an exception that occurred in our code

Stack trace
● What stack trace is and how it is useful
● Why unhandled exceptions are bad news

Handling exceptions. Try-catch-finally

● How to handle exceptions with the try-catch-finally blocks

Multiple catch blocks

● How to catch exceptions of a specific type
● How to define multiple catch blocks for a single try block
● Why the order of catch blocks matter

Throwing exceptions explicitly

● How to throw exceptions from our code explicitly
● How throwing an exception allows us not to return a value from a method
● When throwing an exception is a good design choice
● How to define valuable exception messages

Built-in exception types

● What are some of the built-in exception types

StackOverflowException. Recursive methods

● What StackOverflowException is
● What recursive methods are
 ● What risks may recursive methods cause and how they can be mitigated

Precise exceptions
● Why it is important to be precise when using exceptions
● Why in most cases, we should avoid throwing and catching the base SystemException
type.

Rethrowing exceptions. Throw vs throw ex

● What rethrowing exceptions is
● What the difference between “throw” and “throw ex” is, and which one we should use
● Why the InnerException property is so important

Rethrowing a System.Exception object

● How to manage exceptions if we don't know exactly what exceptions can be thrown from
some code
● What might be a good reason to catch the exception of the System.Exception type

Global try-catch block

● What a global try-catch block is

Code inside the catch block

● What code we should and what we should not put into the catch block
● What happens if an exception is thrown from a catch block
● What nested try-catch blocks are

Exception filters
● What exception filters are
● How exception filters can let us better control what exceptions will be processed by a
catch block

Custom exceptions
● How to define custom exceptions
When to use custom exceptions
● When we should define custom exceptions
● What the Principle of least surprise is

Exceptions as a hidden part of a method signature

● That exceptions that a method may throw are, in a way, a hidden part of this method's
signature

Two extreme schools of using exceptions

● What the drawbacks of using exceptions are
● What the goto statement is and why using it is considered a bad idea
● What the alternatives for using exceptions are
● What issues we can have if we decide not to use exceptions at all

Smart usage of exceptions - throw

● How to be smart about using exceptions
● when throwing exceptions explicitly from our code is a good idea

Smart usage of exceptions - catch

● How to use the catch block smartly
● When we should put code in a try-catch block
● What a catch block should do

Assignment - Game Data Parser - Sunny day scenario

● How to quickly build C# classes based on types defined in JSON

Assignment - Game Data Parser - Flow controlled by exceptions

● How exceptions can control the flow of the application
● How to use the "default" keyword to assign a default value to a variable of any type

Assignment - Game Data Parser - Adding details to JsonException

● How to wrap existing exceptions into new ones
● How to change the font color in console applications
Assignment - Game Data Parser - Custom logger
● How to create a simple exceptions logger
● What are some of the logging libraries for .NET

Assignment - Game Data Parser - Fewer exceptions

● How can the number of try-catch block in an application be reduced

Assignment - Game Data Parser - Refactoring - Extracting methods

● How to extract smaller, more focused methods from a single, big method

Assignment - Game Data Parser - Refactoring - SRP, DI, and classes

decoupling
● How to refactor the code to meet Single Responsibility Principle and the Dependency
Inversion Principle
Generic types & advanced use of methods
Introduction to generic types
● What generic types are and what their purpose is

Understanding how List works under the hood

● How the List works under the hood
● What operations can negatively impact the List's performance
● What data structures are

Simplified List
● How to implement a simplified List

Simplified List (deleting an item at a given index)

● How to implement a simplified List
● What indexers are

A need for generic types. Implementing a generic type

● Why generic types are a crucial part of the language
● How to create generic types
● The purpose of the default keyword

A need for tuples

● How to handle a situation when we want to return more than one result from a method
● What an algorithm is
● How to implement an algorithm for finding a minimal and maximal number in a collection

Tuples
● How to define generic types in practice
● How to implement a custom tuple
● How to use build-in tuples
C# without generics. ArrayList
● How programmers used to manage their code when generics were not a part of C#
● What an ArrayList is and what issues it can cause

Generic methods
● How to define generic methods
● How the compiler infers the type parameter from the context in which some method is
used

Generic methods with multiple type parameters

● How to define generic methods with more than one type parameters
● How to convert the collection of one type into a collection of another type

Convert.ChangeType method. Typeof keyword and the Type object

● How to convert objects of any type into objects of any other type
● What the Type class is
● The purpose of the "typeof" keyword and the GetType method

A need for type constraints

● What type constraints are and what their purpose is
● The purpose of the “where” keyword
● How the parameterless constructor constraint works

Improving the performance of the List. Measuring the time of the method’s
execution
● How we can improve the performance of a list to which many items are added one by
one
● How to measure the time of the code execution using the Stopwatch class

Type constraints - the constraint on the base type

● More about type constraints
● How we can limit the generic type arguments only to types derived from a certain base
class
IComparable interface. Ordering objects
● How to sort Lists of various types
● What the IComparable<T> interface is and how to implement it

Type constraints - the constraint on the implemented interface

● How we can limit the generic type arguments only to types implementing a certain
interface

Type constraints - numeric types. Generic math

● What type constraint allows us to limit the type argument to only numeric types
● What the generic math feature is

Type constraints - summary. Multiple type constraints

● How to define multiple constraints for a single type parameter
● How to manage constraints for multiple generic type parameters.

Funcs and Actions

● How we can assign methods to variables
● What Funcs and Actions are
● How Funcs and Actions can help us reduce code repetitions

Lambda expressions
● What lambda expressions are

Delegates
● What delegates are
● The difference between delegates and Funcs or Actions
● What a multicast delegate is

Dictionary - introduction
● What Dictionaries are
Dictionary - practice
● How to use Dictionaries in practice

A need for the Strategy design pattern

● What code could benefit from using the Strategy design pattern

Refactoring the code using Funcs and lambda expressions

● How to refactor the code using Funcs and lambda expressions

Open-Closed Principle. Strategy design pattern

● What the Strategy design pattern is
● What the Open-Closed Principle is (O in SOLID)
● How to use Funcs, Dictionaries and generic methods in practice

Generic filtering of collections

● How to access the collections of keys of a Dictionary
● How to define generic methods in practice

Caching
● What caching is

Assignment - Custom Cache - Implementation

● How to implement a simple caching mechanism

Assignment - Custom Cache - Decorator design pattern

● What the Decorator design pattern is
● How it can help us follow the Open-Closed Principle

Assignment - Custom Cache - Composing many Decorators together

● How we can compose many decorators together to add more than one feature to a
decorated object
LINQ

What is LINQ
● What LINQ is
● What the benefits of using it are
● What LINQ queries look like

LINQ and extension methods

● How it is possible that we can call the same LINQ methods on different types of
collections

LINQ, IEnumerable and method chaining

● What is the relation between LINQ and IEnumerable interface

Deferred execution
● What deferred execution is
● How it can improve the performance of our applications

Any
● How to use the Any method from LINQ

All
● How to use the All method from LINQ

Count
● How to use the Count and LongCount methods from LINQ

Contains
● How to use the Contains method from LINQ
OrderBy
● How to use the OrderBy, OrderByDescending, ThenBy, ThenByDescending methods
from LINQ

First and Last

● How to use the First and Last methods from LINQ (along with FirstOrDefault and
LastOrDefault)

Where
● How to use the Where method from LINQ

Select
● How to use the Select method from LINQ

Average. Anonymous types

● What anonymous types are
● How they can be used with LINQ
● How to calculate the average value in a collection of numbers

Assignment - Refactoring to LINQ - Nested loop and code readability

● How to refactor code to use LINQ
● Whether making code shorter is always a good idea

Assignment - Refactoring to LINQ - Find and Replace Windows

● How to use the Find and Replace tool to perform an advanced search of a given phrase
● How to rearrange Visual Studio windows
● What regular expressions are

Assignment - Refactoring to LINQ - Fewer loops & multiline strings

formatting
● How to refactor loops using LINQ queries
● Why we must be careful when formatting the code using multiline string literals
Assignment - Refactoring to LINQ - Checking if collection has duplicates
● How to find an item matching a given predicate with LINQ (practice)
● How to reduce the number of times LINQ iterates an input collection
● How to check if a collection contains any duplicated elements
.NET under the hood
.NET and C#
● What .NET is and how it is different from C#
● What are the examples of .NET-compatible programming languages
● What are the examples of .NET-related technologies
● What the differences between .NET Framework, .NET Core and .NET are

Common Intermediate Language (CIL)

● What the Common Intermediate Language is
● How and when it is compiled into binary code by the Just-in-Time compiler
● How can C# code can communicate with other .NET-compatible languages

Common Language Runtime (CLR)

● What the Common Language Runtime (CLR) is

Memory of a program. The stack and the heap

● How memory is organized in .NET applications
● What the stack and the heap are and what the difference between them is

Value semantics vs reference semantics

● What value semantics and reference semantics are.

Value types vs reference types

● What the difference between value types and reference types is

Value types vs reference types - practical tips

● How to use value and reference types in practice
● What an impact of changing a class to a struct may be
● What some of the benefits of using immutable types may be
“ref” keyword
● What the purpose of the “ref” modifier is
● What the difference between “ref” and “out” modifiers is

Using “ref” with reference types

● How the “ref” modifier can be used with parameters of reference types

Unified type system. A need for boxing and unboxing

● What a unified type system is in C# and why it is so important

Boxing and unboxing

● What boxing and unboxing are

Boxing and unboxing - performance cost

● What the performance impact of boxing and unboxing is
● What the size of a reference is

Garbage Collector - introduction

● What Garbage Collector is
● Under what circumstances it may be triggered to start its work
 ● How it can affect the performance of our applications

Garbage Collector - Memory fragmentation and defragmentation

● What memory fragmentation is
● How it can be fixed in a process called defragmentation

Garbage Collector - The Mark-And-Sweep algorithm

● How the Garbage Collector decides what objects can be removed from memory using
the Mark-and-Sweep algorithm
● What Reference counting is and what disadvantages it has
● What a circular reference is

Garbage Collector - Generations of objects

● What generations of objects are
● How they improve the performance of the Garbage Collector
● What the Large Objects Heap is
● What it means that an object is pinned

Memory Leaks
● What memory leaks are
● How having static fields in classes may cause the risk of memory leaks

Finalizers
● What destructors (also known as finalizers) are
● When we should define them

Dispose method - introduction

● What he purpose of the Dispose method coming from the IDisposable interface is
● What managed and unmanaged resources are.

Dispose method - writing to a file with the StreamWriter

● How to create a class that writes to a file using the StreamWriter class
Dispose method - reading from a file with the StreamReader
● How to use the StreamWriter class to read from a file
● Why disposing of unmanaged resources is so critical

Dispose method - implementation

● How to use the Dispose method to free unmanaged resources
● What using statement is
● What syntactic sugar is

CSV Files
● What CSV files are
● Why there is a significant chance you will work with them one day

Reading CSV files

● How to create a simple class that can load data from a CSV file
● How to use StreamReader in practice
● Why the backslash ( \ ) is a special character and how it can allow us to escape other
special characters in strings

Assignment - CSV Processing Improvements - Code analysis & tips

● What the existing code in the assignment solution does

Assignment - CSV Processing Improvements - Reducing the size of

Dictionaries
● How we can reduce a size of a Dictionary representing a row in a CSV

Assignment - CSV Processing Improvements - Reducing the number of

boxings
● How to reduce the number of boxing operations in an application
● Why some performance improvements only make sense for specific input data
Assignment - CSV Processing Improvements - Analysis
● That when making performance improvements, we must be aware of both the nature of
the data we operate on and the users' expectations
Advanced C# types
Reflection
● What reflection is and what it is useful for
● How to use the Type object in practice
● What the upsides and downsides of reflection are

Attributes
● What attributes are and how to use them
● How to define a custom attribute
● How to use reflection in practice
● What metadata is

Limitations of attributes parameters types

● The limitations of attributes parameters types

Structs
● What structs are and how they differ from classes
● Why structs should rather be small
● How to define type constraints to only allow using value types or reference types as a
generic type parameter

Structs vs classes - crucial differences

● The most crucial differences between structs and classes

Structs vs classes - low-level differences

● What the low-level differences between classes and structs are

Choosing between structs and classes

● When we should use classes and when we should use structs
Why should we make structs immutable?
● Why making structs immutable is a good idea

Non-destructive mutation
● What non-destructive mutation is

“With” expression
● How to use the "with" expression to perform non-destructive mutation

Readonly structs
● How to enforce the immutability of a struct

A close look at the System.Object type. The ReferenceEquals method.

● What methods we can call on any object in C#
● What the ReferenceEquals method does

Equals method
● What the Equals method from the System.Object type is
● What its default behavior for value and reference types is

Overriding the Equals method in classes

● How to override the Equals method in classes

Overriding the Equals method in structs

● What may be the reasons for overriding the Equals method in structs
● How to generate the Equals method override with the help of Visual Studio

IEquatable<T> interface
● What the IEquatable<T> interface is and why we should bother implementing it
● How it is different from the IComparable<T> interface
● What happens if there are two methods with the same name in a type, which could both
be used with a given argument
== operator
● What the == operator does
● How its behavior differs for value and reference type

Operators overloading
● How operator overloading works in C#
● How to overload the +, ==, != operators
● Which operators can be overloaded, and which cannot

Overloading of implicit and explicit conversion operators

● What implicit and explicit conversion operators are and how to overload them

Hash functions
● What hash functions are and how they relate to the GetHashCode method
● What the characteristics of a good hash function are
● What hash conflict is and why it is inevitable

Default implementation of the GetHashCode method

● What the default implementation of the GetHashCode method is for value and reference
types

When to override the GetHashCode method

● When we should override the default implementation of the GetHashCode method

Overriding the GetHashCode method

● How to override the GetHashCode method in our types
● How to use the HashCode.Combine method

ValueTuples
● What ValueTuples are and how they are different from tuples
Benefits of immutable types
● The benefits of using immutable types
● What pure functions are
● The downsides of using immutable types

Records
● What records and positional records are
● What the benefit of using them is

Record structs
● What record structs are

Nullable value types

● What nullable value types are

Nullable reference types

● What nullable reference types are
● What code review is

Null-forgiving operator
● The purpose of the null-forgiving operator
● How the warnings shown in the Visual Studio can help us improve our code

Using nullable reference types. Generic type constraints related to

nullability
● When to use nullable reference types
● How to disable or enable this feature in specific parts of the code using preprocessor
directives
● The generic type constraints for nullable and non-nullable types

APIs
● What APIs are
Querying an API using C#
● How to read data from a public API in our C# programs
● How to use asynchronous methods and how to await their execution

A class for querying APIs

● How to create a class that reads JSON strings from any open API
● The limitations of using the await keyword and how to make a method asynchronous
● Deserializing JSON data to C# objects in practice

Assignment - Star Wars Planets Stats - JsonPropertyAttribute and DTOs

● The role of the JsonPropertyName attribute
● What DTOs are
● How to use Quick Actions shortcut

Assignment - Star Wars Planets Stats - Exceptions handling

● Handling exceptions in our apps in practice
● How to quickly find out what exceptions may be thrown by a method
● What documentation comments are

Assignment - Star Wars Planets Stats - Type design

● How to design the types our programs use
● How to use the QuickWatch window

Assignment - Star Wars Planets Stats - Converting DTO to a custom type

● Overloading the explicit conversion operator in practice
● Why we shouldn't mingle the types coming from the API with our custom types (and how
it can be avoided)

Assignment - Star Wars Planets Stats - Finishing the app and the MaxBy
method
● How to use the MaxBy and MinBy methods from LINQ
Assignment - Star Wars Planets Stats - Refactoring
● How to use the messages related to the code analysis performed by Visual Studio
● The purpose of the null-coalescing assignment operator.

Assignment - Star Wars Planets Stats - Splitting the class

● How to split a class into smaller classes, to make it compliant with the Single
Responsibility Principle

Assignment - Star Wars Planets Stats - Universal table printer

● Using reflection in practice
● How to format strings
Collections

The role of the IEnumerable interface

● What the main interfaces related to collections are
● What the role of the IEnumerable interface is

A close look at the IEnumerable interface

● What methods are defined in the IEnumerable interface
● How they are used when a foreach loop is executed

Implementing IEnumerable
● How to implement the IEnumerable interface in custom collections

Implicit and explicit interface implementation

● What methods are required by the IEnumerable<T> interface
● What Implicit and explicit interface implementations are

Implementing IEnumerable<T>
● How to implement the IEnumerable<T> interface
● What backward compatibility is
● What named arguments are

Indexers
● What indexers are and how to define custom indexers

Collection initializers
● How to implement collection initializers in our custom collection

ICollection and IList interfaces

● About two interfaces related to collections - ICollection and IList interfaces
Breaking of Interface Segregation Principle
● What happens if a type is forced to implement an interface that it cannot implement in
any reasonable way

Interface Segregation Principle

● What the Interface Segregation Principle is (I in SOLID)

The benefits of readonly collections

● What readonly collections are and what the benefits of using them are

Readonly collections. ReadOnlyCollection and ReadOnlyDictionary

● How a collection can be made readonly

Big O Notation
● What Big O notation is
● How it can help us understand the complexity of an algorithm

Binary search algorithm

● How the binary search algorithm works
● What Divide-and-conquer strategy for solving problems is

Binary search algorithm - implementation

● How to implement the binary search algorithm in C#

Binary search algorithm - complexity

● What the time complexity of the binary search algorithm is
● What the logarithmic complexity is
● Why using binary search may be a good idea
● How to use the built-in version of this algorithm
Improving performance when using Lists
● Tips for improving code performance when using Lists
● How to generate a collection of numbers using Enumerable.Range method
● How to write long numbers in a readable way

Linked list
● What linked lists are

Linked list vs List

● How basic operations differ for Linked lists and lists
● What the performance differences between those data structures are
● When to use Lists, and when Linked lists

Dictionaries under the hood

● How Dictionaries word under the hood
● What hash tables are
● Why overriding the GetHashCode and Equals methods together is so important

Performance of Dictionaries
● What the performance of basic operations performed on Dictionaries is

HashSet
● What HashSets are and what the use cases for them may be
● How to remove the duplicates from a collection efficiently

Queue
● What queues are
● What FIFO stands for
● What priority queues are

Stack
● What stacks are
● What LIFO stands for
“Params” keyword
● The purpose of the “params” keyword

A need for yield statement

● What may be the use cases for yield statements

yield statement - behavior analysis

● How the code using yield statements behaves

yield statement and iterators

● How the yield statement works
● What the role of iterators is

yield statement - practice. yield break statement

● How to use iterators in practice
● The purpose of the yield break statement

Implementing IEnumerable interface using iterators

● How to implement the IEnumerable interface using iterators

Assignment - Custom Linked List - Data Structures

● How to implement the Node data structure required by the linked list

Assignment - Custom Linked List - The AddToFront method

● How to implement adding new items to the front of the linked list

Assignment - Custom Linked List - Implementing IEnumerable

● How to implement the GetEnumerator method using iterators in practice

Assignment - Custom Linked List - Adding new items at the end of the list
● How to implement the Add and AddToEnd methods for a linked list
Assignment - Custom Linked List - The Clear method
● How to implement the Clear method for a linked list
● Why it is a bad idea to modify a collection that is being iterated

Assignment - Custom Linked List - Removing items and the Contains

method
● How to implement the Remove and Contains methods for a linked list

Assignment - Custom Linked List - The CopyTo method

● How to implement the CopyTo method for a linked list

Assignment - Custom Linked List - Summary and performance review.

Private classes
● How the implemented SinglyLinkedList differs from the built-in LinkedList
● What nested classes and private classes are
Projects, assemblies, solutions

Projects and solutions

● About C# projects and solutions
● How to add more than one project to the solution

Project properties
● What the project’s properties are and how we can change them

Debug build vs Release build

● The difference between Debug and Release builds

Assemblies
● What assemblies are
● What the difference between a project and an assembly is

Referencing types from another assembly

● How to reference an existing assembly in our code

Referencing types from another project

● How to reference one project from another

Internal access modifier. Principles of using access modifiers

● The purpose of the internal access modifier
● What happens when the type has a stricter access modifier than the members it
contains
● Why the access modifiers we use within types and methods must be consistent
Protected internal access modifier
● The purpose of the protected internal access modifier

Private protected access modifier

● The purpose of the private protected access modifier
● The purpose of the file access modifier

Access modifiers - summary

● The differences between access modifiers
● Which access modifiers should be used in what context

How to structure the code in a solution

● How to split a solution into projects smartly
● What circular dependencies are

NuGet
● What NuGet is

*.csproj files
● What *.csproj files are

*.sln files
● What *.sln files are

Updating the .NET version

● How to update the version of .NET in the code we work on
Strings

Char
● More about chars
● Basic methods for character manipulation

Char representation in memory. Character encoding

● How characters are stored in memory
● What character encoding is
● How UTF-16 encoding works

Managing various encodings

● How to deal with various encodings of characters

Immutability of strings
● About the immutability of strings
● What the underlying data structure for strings is

Strings - value or reference types?

● Whether strings are value or reference types

Strings as members in structs

● Why structs should not contain fields or properties of reference types
● Why strings are an exception

A need for StringBuilder

● What problems can be caused by an incremental building of large strings
StringBuilder
● How to optimize the process of the incremental building of strings by using the
StringBuilder class

String interning
● What string interning is

Flyweight design pattern

● The flyweight design pattern

Advanced string formatting

● Advanced formatting of strings
● More about string.Format method

Culture-specific string formatting

● About culture-specific string formatting
● What CultureInfo object is

Specific culture vs Invariant culture

● What the difference between specific and invariant cultures is

Assignment - Tickets Data Aggregator - Reading text from PDF

● How to extract textual data from a PDF document
● What OCR is

Assignment - Tickets Data Aggregator - List all PDFs from a folder

● How to list all files with specific extensions from a given folder

Assignment - Tickets Data Aggregator - Splitting a string by multiple

separators
● How to split a string using a group of separators.
Assignment - Tickets Data Aggregator - Parsing culture-specific strings
● Using specific cultures when managing strings
● DateOnly and TimeOnly types

Assignment - Tickets Data Aggregator - Saving all results in a text file

● How to use invariant culture in practice
● How to use StringBuilder in practice

Assignment - Tickets Data Aggregator - Refactoring

● How to refactor the code in practice, and how to split large method into smaller ones

Assignment - Tickets Data Aggregator - Compliance with the SRP

● How to identify the responsibilities of a class in practice
● How to make a class compliant with the Single Responsibility Principle
Numeric types
Decimal number system
● How the decimal number system works

Binary number system

● How the binary number system works

Maximal numbers on a given number of digits

● The relation between the number of digits in a number and the maximal value of this
number

Numbers in memory. Integer

● How numbers are represented in a computer's memory
● What the size and range of an integer is

Adding binary numbers

● How to add binary numbers

Numeric overflow & silent failures

● What numeric overflow is
● Why it may be dangerous
● What silent failures are

“checked” keyword
● The purpose of the “checked” keyword
● How to deal with numeric overflows

Checked context - when to use it?

● When the checked keyword should be used
● What the alternatives for using the checked context may be
Scope of the checked context. Unchecked keyword
● How to enable checking for numeric overflow globally for a project
● What the purpose of the "unchecked" keyword is
● What the scope of a checked context is

Integral numeric types overview.

● About various integral numeric types

Floating-point numbers
● What floating-point numbers are

Double and float

● How float and double work

Smart usage of floating point numbers

● How to deal with the fact that floats and doubles are not perfectly precise
● What are reasonable use cases for them
● What NaN is

Decimal
● How to represent fractions in C# precisely
● More about decimal
● How is decimal different from double

Events
A need for communication between objects
● How sending notifications between software components may be implemented
A need for the Observer design pattern
● What the characteristics of a good notification mechanism are

Observer design pattern

● What the Observer design pattern is

Defining an item and subscribing to it

● How to define events
● How to subscribe to an events

Raising events
● How to raise events
● The purpose of the Invoke method
● What the purpose of the null-propagating operator is ( ?. operator )

EventHandler delegate & EventArgs type

● How to use the built-in EventHandler delegate
● What EventArgs type is

Event vs delegate members

● The difference between an event and a member of a delegate type

Windows Forms - introduction

● What Windows Forms framework is

The first Windows Forms app

● How to create a simple Windows Forms app

Understanding Windows Forms files

● How a form we create using a designer is represented in C# file
● What regions are and how they can be defined
● What partial classes are
Events in Windows Forms
● How to handle events that happen in the user interface of Windows Forms apps

Windows Forms - basic UI elements

● basic UI elements used in Windows Forms apps

Assignment - Numeric Types Suggester - User Interface & basic events

● Creating interfaces and configuring events in practice

Assignment - Numeric Types Suggester - Handling KeyPress event

● How to handle the KeyPress events raised by the textboxes to ensure only valid input is
accepted
● How to use the sender parameter of an event handler method

Assignment - Numeric Types Suggester - Numbers validation and

BigInteger type
● How to implement the validation of values in a form
● How to parse strings to BigIntegers

Assignment - Numeric Types Suggester - Choosing Numeric Types

● How to implement the algorithm for finding the proper numeric type based on the
parameters of the numbers
Unit testing
Manual tests vs Automated tests
● What automated tests are
● How they are better than manual tests
● Why is it worth

Setting up the testing environment

● How to create a test project
● What NuGet packages are required to write and run unit tests

The first unit test

● How to write a unit test
● What an assertion is

Running unit tests

● How to run and debug unit tests
● What the Test Explorer is

Naming unit tests

● How to name unit tests

Test messages
● How to specify the test messages

AAA pattern
● What the AAA pattern is

Test cases
● What test cases are and how to define them
Naming parameterized tests
● How to name tests consisting of many test cases

TestCaseSource attribute
● What the limitations of the TestCase attribute are
● How to bypass them by using the TestCaseSource attribute

Assertions related to exceptions

● How to write an assertion checking if an exception was thrown
● Whether it is a good idea to have more than one assert in a test

Value of unit tests

● What the the value of unit tests is in practice
● What code coverage is

Basic assertions
● The most basic types of assertions we can make in NUnit tests

Testing private methods

● How to approach testing private methods

Testing internal methods

● How to approach testing internal methods

Benefits of unit tests - no fear of refactoring

● How unit tests enable refactoring and improve code quality
● How it relates to the costs of producing software

Benefits of unit tests - better design

● How unit tests help create better code design
● What TDD is
Benefits of unit tests - early bug detection
● How unit tests help detect bugs early

Downsides of unit tests

● The downsides of unit tests
● The difference between white-box testing and black-box testing
● When it makes sense to skip unit tests

Assignment - Fibonacci Generator Tests - Solution

● Creating unit tests in practice

Testing classes depending on other classes

● The need to test classes that depend on other classes

A need for mocks

● What issues may be caused by using actual dependencies of a class in unit tests

Mocks
● What mocks are and how to use them
● How to install the Moq library
● How to install NuGet packages without opening the NuGet package manager

Controlling the mock behavior

● How to control the behavior of a mock

The benefits of using mocks

● What the benefits of using mocks are

Advanced mock setup

● Advanced techniques for controlling the behavior of mocks
Assertions checking if a method was called
● How to assert that a certain method was called on a mock

Advanced assertions on method calls

● Advanced techniques for verifying the behavior of mocks

Clean code in unit tests

● About the importance of clean code in unit tests

Common setup for tests

● How to define a common setup for multiple tests
● What the CUT object is
● How using the nullable reference types feature may affect the code of our tests

Tests, Dependency Inversion and Dependency Injection

● The importance of Dependency Inversion and Dependency Injection in the context of
unit tests

Untestable code - no Dependency Inversion

● How to fix the testability issues in code that breaks the Dependency Inversion Principle

Untestable code - static classes and methods

● How using static classes may make our code untestable

Other kinds of software tests

● Different types of tests than unit tests (integration, end-to-end, performance, smoke and
regression tests)

Assignment - Unit tests for GuessingGame - Basic scenarios

● How to define unit tests in practice
Assignment - Unit tests for GuessingGame - Checking the messages
● Verifying if specific methods were executed on mocks in practice

Assignment - Unit tests for GuessingGame - Approaches for messages

validation
● Various approaches to testing the exact messages produced by the code

Assignment - Unit tests for GuessingGame - Resource files

● What resource files are
● How to define them
● How to read their content
Clean Code
The importance of clean code
● Why keeping code clean is so important

Bad decisions related to code quality

● What mistakes may lead to the fall of a software project
● What the Definition of Done (DoD) is

Tech debt
● What tech debt is

Being professional
● How we, the developers, should handle communication with the project management
regarding the quality of the code

What is clean code?

● What clean code is

The importance of meaningful names

● What the importance of meaningful names is

Renaming. The Boy Scout rule

● How to rename things, and change bad names into better ones
● What the Boy Scout Rule is

Dealing with problematic naming

● What to do when we try to name something but a clear and expressive name simply
cannot be found
Expressive names
● How to name things so that our intentions are expressed clearly and precisely

Long and short names

● How long the names should be

Principle of the least surprise

● What the principle of the least surprise is

Bad names - meaningless words

● What meaningless words we should avoid when naming things

Bad names - overspecific names

● Why using overspecific names is not a good idea.

Bad names - Hungarian notation

● What Hungarian notation is and why it is better to avoid it

Bad names - confusing names

● Examples of names that are confusing to the reader
● How we can avoid this

Bad names - abbreviations

● Why using abbreviations is usually a mistake

Reasonable abbreviations. Conventional names

● When using abbreviations may be acceptable
● Conventions in naming
Context
● The importance of the context in which a name functions

Refactoring case study - naming

● Refactoring with a focus on improving naming

Good signatures of methods

● How to design methods signatures well

Number of parameters
● How the number of method’s parameters can affect the cleanliness of the code

Fewer parameters - splitting the method

● How to reduce the number of method parameters by splitting this method

Fewer parameters - bundling related parameters

● How to reduce the number of method parameters by bundling multiple parameters
together

Fewer parameters - avoiding boolean parameters

● Why it is often better to avoid boolean parameters

Small methods
● How big the methods should be

One method, one job

● How many tasks one method should perform

One method, one job - refactoring example

● An example of a method that fails to do one thing only
 ● How such methods could be refactored

Levels of abstraction
● What levels of abstraction are

Composing different levels of abstraction

● How to correctly compose operations that are at different levels of abstraction

Levels of abstraction within methods

● How to achieve methods in which the levels of abstraction are correctly utilized

Refactoring case study - methods - introduction

● Refactoring methods in practice
● Identifying issues in methods design

Refactoring case study - methods - signature

● Refactoring of a method’s signature

Refactoring case study - methods - body

● Refactoring of a method’s body by extracting smaller methods

Comments
● Why adding comments is usually a bad idea

The worst comments

● Common examples of using comments in an extremely poor manner
● What the alternative solutions could be

The reasonable comments

● Scenarios when using comments may be a good idea
When to make methods static? Private methods
● When making methods static is a good idea (private methods)

The risk of making public methods static

● Why making public methods static may be a bad idea

When to make methods static? Public methods

● When making a public method static may be a good idea

Composition over inheritance

● The differences and similarities between composition and inheritance
● Composition over Inheritance principle

The issues of inheritance

● What issues inheritance causes

Replacing inheritance with composition

● How we can refactor the code to use composition rather than inheritance

Benefits of composition
● Benefits of composition over inheritance

Assignment - Password Generator Refactoring - Existing code

● The purpose of the Enumerable.Repeat method

Assignment - Password Generator Refactoring - Fixing naming

● How to improve naming in code
Assignment - Password Generator Refactoring - Improving design
● How to improve design in code
Multithreading & asynchrony
The computer’s processor
● How the computer’s processor works

Threads and processes

● What a thread is
● What multithreading means
● What a process is
● The difference between a thread and a process

Concurrency vs parallelism
● The difference between concurrency and parallelism

Asynchrony
● What asynchrony is
● The difference between asynchrony and multithreading

A single-threaded program
● How a basic, single-threaded application is processed by the CPU
● How to check the number of cores in CPU
● How to list all threads in the application while debugging

Starting a new thread. The Thread class

● How to start a new thread using the Thread class
● The difference between foreground and background threads

Multithreaded app’s code flow

● How the flow of the program changes when we use multiple threads
The benefits of multithreading and asynchronous programming
● Why we need multithreading and asynchronous programming

The cost of threads. ThreadPool

● The cost of creating new threads
● How it can be reduced by using the ThreadPool

Task Parallel Library (TPL)

● What TPL, the Task Parallel Library is

Task class
● What the Task class is
● How to create and start new Tasks

Returning a value from a Task

● How to define Tasks that return a value
● The purpose of the Thread.Sleep method

Waiting for the Task result

● How to wait for the Task to return its result
● What a blocking operation is

Wait and WaitAll methods

● The purpose of the Wait and WaitAll methods

Continuations. The ContinueWith method

● How to wait for task completion in a non-blocking way
● What task continuations are
● How we can use them to perform some action after a task is completed

Chaining continuations. Continuations of multiple tasks

● How to define a chain of continuations, that will all be executed one after the other
 ● How to schedule a continuation of multiple tasks

Canceling a Task
● How cancellations of tasks work
● What a cancellation token is and how to use it

Task lifecycle
● What the lifecycle of a task is
● How we can check the task's current status
● What child tasks are
● The purpose of the Task.FromResult method

OperationCanceledException
● The typical way of canceling tasks
● The role of the OperationCanceledException

Exceptions thrown by other threads

● How exceptions are managed when they are thrown on other threads

Exceptions in tasks
● What happens if an exception is thrown within a task
● What an AggregateException is

Asynchronous exception handling

● How to handle exceptions thrown from tasks asynchronously
● The purpose of the TaskContinuationOptions enum

Handling AggregateException
● How to handle exceptions carried within AggregateException

Multiple continuations for one task

● How to set up multiple continuations for a single task
Handling task cancellation
● How to handle task cancellation

The need for synchronization

● Why we need synchronization mechanisms when working with multithreading
● An example of an operation performed by multiple threads that may result in an
unexpected program output
● What thread safety is

Atomic operations
● What asynchrony is
● The difference between asynchrony and multithreading

Race condition
● What asynchrony is
● The difference between asynchrony and multithreading

Locks
● What a lock is
● How to use it to prevent two threads from accessing some shared resources at the same
time
● What a critical section is

The need for async/await

● Why we need async/await

“Await” keyword
● The purpose of the “await” keyword

Async methods
● How to define async methods
 ● What types can be returned from async methods
● What types we can use the "await" keyword with

Asynchrony vs multithreading
● The difference between asynchrony and multithreading (revisited)
● The purpose of the Task.Delay method

The flow of an asynchronous program

● The flow of an asynchronous program

Async/await and threads

● The relation between the async/await pattern and the creation of new threads

Async/await summary
● The summary of the async/await topic

Async/await practice
● Using async/await in practice

Exceptions in async methods

● How to deal with exceptions thrown in async methods

Downsides of multithreading & asynchrony

● The downsides of multithreading and asynchrony

Using async methods in practice. HttpClient

● How to communicate with APIs using asynchronous methods from the HttpClient class

Assignment - Quote Finder - Fetching data

● Using async methods in practice
Assignment - Quote Finder - Smart asynchrony
● How to write optimal code fetching data with multiple requests
● The purpose of the Task.WhenAll method

Assignment - Quote Finder - Single-threaded processing

● The purpose of the StringSplitOptions and StringComparison enums

Assignment - Quote Finder - Multi-threaded processing

● Using multithreading in practice

Assignment - Quote Finder - Refactoring

● Practice how code can be refactored and divided into classes
● The naming convention for async methods