What's New in the Third Edition?

Third Edition Second Edition First Edition

The 3rd Edition was primarily for Visual Studio 2017 and C# 7.0, but the whole book got a ton of attention. I probably did 8 times as much work for the 3rd Edition as I did for the 2nd, and I think it shows!

• Updated for Visual Studio 2017 and C# 7.0.
• Added material on new C# 7 features:
  • Binary literals
  • Digit separator
  • out variable declarations
  • ValueTask information
  • Language support for value tuples (multiple return values)
  • ref returns and ref locals
  • Pattern Matching chapter
  • Local functions
• Added tables and charts in the back of the book as reference.
  • Keywords table.
  • Operators table.
  • Build-in type hierarchy.
  • Types table.
• Added several new chapters that are about existing C# topics:
  • Unsafe/unmanaged code
  • Dynamic objects
  • A Tic-Tac-Toe problem in the middle of the book to ease the learning curve.
• Massive rewrite of several chapters:
  • LINQ
  • Installing Visual Studio (brand new installer)
  • The .NET Framework/Platform to include .NET Standard, .NET Core, and Xamarin
  • The chapter on project dependencies (includes NuGet)
  • The two chapters on creating and using classes got a lot of attention to make the learning curve less steep.
• Fleshed out many topics not previously covered, but that were C# features:
  • Hexadecimal literals
  • sizeof operator
  • Operator associativity and precedence details
  • P/Invoke
  • The goto keyword.
  • The default keyword
  • Checked and unchecked contexts
  • Partial methods
  • Generic covariance and contravariance
  • Multiple variable assignments and declarations on the same line
  • The global namespace and namespace aliases
  • Volatile fields
• Added a number of additional Try It Out problems and quizzes.
• Added section to the website to include additional Try It Out problems.
• Many additional tweaks to make the book better.