The book in your hands is a different kind of programming book. Like an entertaining video game, programming is an often challenging but always rewarding experience. This book shakes off the dusty, dull, dryness of the typical programming book, replacing it with something more exciting and flavorful: a bit of humor, a casual tone, and examples involving dragons and asteroids instead of bank accounts and employees.

And since you learn to program by doing instead of just reading, this book contains over 100 hands-on programming challenges. You will be building software instead of just reading about it. By completing the challenges, you’ll earn experience points, level up, and become a True C# Programmer!

This book covers the C# language from the ground up. It doesn’t assume you’ve been programming for years, but it also doesn’t hold back on exciting, powerful language features.

• The journey begins by getting you set up to program in C#.
• 
  
• We will then explore the basic mechanics of C#: statements, expressions, variables, if statements, loops, and methods.
• Next, we dive deep into a powerful and central feature of C#: object-oriented programming, which is an essential tool needed to build larger programs.
• We then look at the advanced C# features that make the language unique, elegant, and powerful.

With this book as your companion, you will soon be off to save the world (or take it over) with your own C# programs!

The 5th Edition is updated for C# 10, .NET 6, and Visual Studio 2022.

Table of Contents

PART 1: THE BASICS

PART 2: OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

PART 3: ADVANCED TOPICS

PART 4: THE ENDGAME

PART 5: BONUS LEVELS