To get the best possible outcome from this book, it's advisable for you to have the following:

• A basic understanding of software development
• A basic understanding of any common programming language, such as C, C++, or C#

For the entirety of this book, we will be going through different code examples in C# and will be using Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition for the code examples. The following hardware requirements are essential for Visual Studio:

• Operating system:
  • Windows 10 or higher
  • Windows Server 2016: Standard and Datacenter
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows Server 2012 R2: Essential, Standard, and Datacenter
  • Windows 7 SP1
• Hardware requirements:
  • Minimum 2 GB of RAM
  • 1.8 GHZ or faster processor
• Additional requirements:
  • Administrative rights of the system
  • .NET Framework 4.5 or higher
• Visual Studio: All of the code examples in this book have been compiled on Visual Studio Community Edition 2017 (you can also use a higher version of Visual Studio). It's available for installation at https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/.

For better understanding, it's advisable that readers go through all the assessments at the end of each chapter as well as the mock tests available at the end of the book.

It's also advisable for readers to go through the code examples available for each of the chapters and do the self-practice after each chapter.

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
2. Select the Support tab.
3. Click on Code Downloads.
4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

• WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
• Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
• 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Programming-in-C-Sharp-Exam-70-483-MCSD-Guide. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781789536577_ColorImages.pdf.

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "By default, a method by the name of Main will also be added to the class."

A block of code is set as follows:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "To create a new project, click on File | New Project and select Console App (.NET Framework) as the project type."