5. C# Language, Part 1: Nouns

Here we are five chapters into a book that has C# in the title, and you discover that there are only three chapters on the language itself. False advertising? No, not really. C# is part of the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework, and in particular the Framework Class Library (FCL), is big and complex. The language itself, the mechanics of the syntax, are the easy bits.

And the best part is that you already know most of what you need. After all, C# is just a dialect of English with very strict syntax rules and a limited vocabulary, and you already speak English.

Just like spoken English, C# has nouns and verbs, sentences and paragraphs. But it doesn’t have tenses or irregular verbs, so you never have to worry about anything as complicated as “I am but you are” or “he would be were he not”. And just like spoken English, once you learn the basic grammatical rules, you’ll be able to concentrate on what you want to say, and not the mechanics of how to say it.