Versions of the C# language

[Staples]

I have two books covering Visual Studio 2005. One book is about the core language and the other is about thread management and all the other intricacies of what Visual Studio 2005 allows you to do. I believe now Visual Studio is two versions ahead of 2005. I have always wanted to read these books cover to cover and become a C# developer but wondering if I should stick to these book and software or just buy the newest version of VS and new books on the current version. I have two questions.

1) Has the actual language changed any since VS 2005? I know the framework has gone from 2.0 to 3.5. If so, how much?

2) Has the existing library hierarchy (existing since VS 2005) changed any or have they just added more top level super classes to the framework?

 

[PTNL]

Go ahead and read the two books you got. The 2.0 framework has only been built on since then with 3.0, 3.5, and the newest 4.0. After reading those books, you can simply catch up with some of the newer topics like WCF, LINQ, WPF, etc.

 

[ambientZ]

More confusingly, there are different versions of the C# language in addition to different versions of the .net framework. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language) has some links to info about the different versions. They mostly correspond to the .net release, but not exactly. (C# 3.0 goes with .net 3.5 for example).

I would start with what you have, and then learn the new features.

If you haven't programmed at all before, you'll be up to your ears in general programming stuff anyway before learning about advanced language features.

 

[Staples]

Thanks for the responses. I have spent years programming in PHP and many college classes programming in C++/JAVA. I have spent a little time doing basic stuff with C# but nothing really serious.