To get the most out of this book

To get the most out of this book you should be familiar with C#. You need to be competent in using one of the three popular IDEs: Visual Studio, Rider, or Visual Studio Code. You should also understand basic object-oriented programming principles such as abstraction, inheritance, encapsulation, and composition.

I don’t spend very much time covering how to use your IDE in this book. However, I do include Appendix 1, which covers how to create a project just in case you’re rusty. This book isn’t designed to be a step-by-step guide through a set of projects. The code in the sample projects doesn’t matter. We’re focusing on the structure of the code, rather than the content of the classes.

The projects in this book are all either command-line or library projects. We won’t be working with any frontend or user interface code. This is done to reduce the level of noise in the projects. I want you focused on the structure of the classes, not what is inside them, nor even what the program is really doing.

I used Windows 10 to create the code in this book. If you want to follow along with the code in the book, you can probably use macOS or Linux. However, I don’t cover those operating systems explicitly, nor do I test the sample code in operating systems other than Windows.

If you intend to code along with our book’s heroes, you’ll need to set up your computer with an appropriate IDE, and .NET Core 6 or later. I used Rider as my IDE, but I verified the code in Visual Studio 2022 and Visual Studio Code.

Software/hardware covered in the book	Operating system requirements
C# 10	Windows
.NET Core 6	Windows
Rider, Visual Studio, or Visual Studio Code	Windows

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

I strongly encourage you to type the code from the book by hand. You’ll learn more by typing it out, by making mistakes, and then fixing them yourself.