C# The programming language Fundamentals

Overview

This course provides a solid foundation in C# programming, equipping learners with the essential skills to write robust, maintainable code for the .NET Framework and .NET Core. With no prior object-oriented programming knowledge required, participants will progress from basic procedural syntax to key object-oriented concepts such as classes, constructors, and properties. The course focuses on the C# language itself—covering console applications, class libraries, and an introduction to unit testing—preparing learners to build on their skills in more advanced C# development. Through a blend of lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on exercises, learners will gain the confidence to create efficient and reliable C# applications.

Prerequisites

Learners should have:

• Some prior exposure to basic programming concepts (equivalent to QA’s Programming Foundations course)
• Basic familiarity with using an IDE or code editor (helpful but not essential)

Target audience

This course is designed for:

• New C# developers looking to build core programming skills
• Developers transitioning to .NET from another language
• Individuals seeking a strong grounding before advancing to C# Intermediate

Objectives

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• Write C# code using sequence, selection, and iteration constructs
• Declare and manage variables, data types, and operators effectively
• Create and use classes and structures, including fields, properties, and methods
• Apply access modifiers (private, internal, protected, public) appropriately
• Implement generic types and work with collection classes such as List<T> and Dictionary<K,V>
• Use lambda expressions to simplify and streamline code
• Understand the principles of unit testing and apply the Arrange-Act-Assert pattern
• Apply object-oriented programming concepts including abstraction and encapsulation

Outline

Introduction to C# and .NET

• The .NET Framework and .NET Core
• Compilation, the Common Language Runtime, and the Common Type System
• What is C#?
• Top-level statements
• Namespaces and using directives
• Navigating Visual Studio and basic debugging

Working with variables and data types

• Comments and identifiers
• Variables, built-in data types, and strings
• Value types vs reference types
• Scope and access modifiers
• Operators, parsing, and casting

Creating and using functions

• Code blocks and syntax basics
• Defining and calling functions
• Parameters and return types
• Method overloading
• Expression-bodied methods

Flow control

• If statements
• Switch statements and switch expressions
• Ternary conditional operator

Arrays, loops, and collections

• Arrays and looping constructs (for, foreach, while, do-while)
• Generic collections: List and Dictionary
• Collection operators

Introduction to unit testing

• Purpose and benefits of unit testing
• The green-red cycle
• Unit testing best practice
• Arrange, Act, Assert methodology

Object-oriented programming fundamentals

• Why object orientation matters
• Four key concepts overview
• Classes, instances, abstraction, and encapsulation
• Value vs reference type behaviour
• Null references

Methods, properties, and constructors

• Static vs instance methods
• Properties with backing fields
• Auto-implemented and calculated properties
• Accessing properties
• Object initialisers and the ‘this’ keyword

Exams and assessments

There are no formal exams for this course. Learners will complete practical coding exercises and interactive challenges to reinforce learning and assess progress.

Hands-on learning

This course includes:

• Instructor-led demonstrations of coding concepts
• Guided coding exercises to build working C# applications
• Hands-on practice with unit testing techniques
• Realistic programming scenarios to apply learned concepts