Chapter 1. Unity C# Refresher

This book is about mastering scripting for Unity, specifically mastering C# in the context of Unity game development. The concept of mastering needs a definition and qualification, before proceeding further. By mastering, I mean this book will help you transition from having intermediate and theoretical knowledge to having more fluent, practical, and advanced knowledge of scripting. Fluency is the keyword here. From the outset of learning any programming language, the focus invariably turns to language syntax and its rules and laws—the formal parts of a language. This includes concepts such as variables, loops, and functions. However, as a programmer gets experience, the focus shifts from language specifically to the creative ways in which language is applied to solve real-world problems. The focus changes from language-oriented problems to questions of context-sensitive application. Consequently, most of this book will not primarily be about the formal language syntax of C#.

After this chapter, I'll assume that you already know the basics. Instead, the book will be about case studies and real-world examples of the use of C#. However, before turning to that, this chapter will focus on the C# basics generally. This is intentional. It'll cover, quickly and in summary, all the C# foundational knowledge you'll need to follow along productively with subsequent chapters. I strongly recommend that you read it through from start to finish, whatever your experience. It's aimed primarily at readers who are reasonably new to C# but fancy jumping in at the deep end. However, it can also be valuable to experienced developers to consolidate their existing knowledge and, perhaps, pick up new advice and ideas along the way. In this chapter, then, I'll outline the fundamentals of C# from the ground up, in a step-by-step, summarized way. I will speak as though you already understand the very basics of programming generally, perhaps with another language, but have never encountered C#. So, let's go.