Poul Klausen - C# 10: More on WPF

This book is the tenth in a series of books on software development. The programming language is C#, and the language and its syntax and semantics fills obviously much, but the books have also largely focus on the process, and how to develop good and robust applications. This book is a continuation of the previous book on WPF. The book deals with issues that one typically encounters in connection with the development of Windows programs. Examples are implementing undo / redo and printing to a physical printer. In addition, as a continuation of the previous book, the book focuses on the development of custom components, but components that are larger and more complex than those shown in the previous book. The book, together with the previous book, is the end of the treatment of WPF, but also of the development of classic PC programs, and the following books will focus on WEB applications and phone apps.

As the title says this series of books deals with software development, and the goal is to teach the reader how to develop applications in C#. It can be learned by reading about the subject and by studying complete sample programs, but most importantly by yourself to do it, and write your own programs from scratch. Therefore, an important part of the books is exercises and problems, where the reader has to write programs that correspond to the substance being treated in the books. All books in the series is built around the same skeleton and will consist of text and examples, exercises and problems that are placed in the text where they naturally belongs. The difference between exercises and problems is that the exercises largely deals with repetitions of the substance that is presented in the text, and furthermore it is relatively accurately described what to do. Problems are in turn more loosely described, and are typically a little bigger and there is rarely any clear best solution. These are books to be read from start to finish, but the many code examples, including exercises and problems plays a central role, and it is important that the reader predict in detail studying the code for the many examples and also solves the exercises and problems or possibly just studying the recommended solutions.

All books ends with a larger sample program, which focus primarily is on the process and an explanation of how the program is written. On the other hand appears the code only to a limited extent, if at all, and the reader should instead study the finished program code, perhaps while testing the program. In addition to show the development of programs that are larger than the examples, which otherwise is presented, the aim of the concluding examples also is to show program examples from varying fields of application.

All sample programs are developed and tested on a Windows machine, and the development tool is Visual Studio. Therefore, you must have Visual Studio installed and Microsoft provides a free version that is fully adequate. Visual Studio is an integrated development environment that provides all the tools needed to develop programs. I do not want to deal with the use of Visual Studio, which is quite straightforward, and it is a program that you quickly become familiar with.

Finally a little about what the books are not. It is not a how to write or for that matter a reference manuals to C#, but it is as the title says books on software development. It is my hope that the reader when reading the books and through the many examples can find inspiration for how to write good programs, but also can be used as a source collection with a number of examples of solutions to concrete everyday programming problems that you regularly face as a software developer.