C Sharp —

Class Members

This is probably the stickiest issue with regards to C# developers. Those of us coming over from C++ and MFC are accustomed to prefixing member names with m_. However, I would recommend using camel casing, in which the first letter is not capitalized. That way if you have a method that takes as an argument something called Foo, you can differentiate it from the internal representation of that variable by creating the internal member named foo.

It's redundant to prefix a member name with the class name. Take, for example, a class name of Author. Instead of creating a member named AuthorName,which would then be written out as Author.AuthorName, instead use Name as the member name.

Summary

Writing, compiling, and executing a program written in C# is an important first step in the exploration of the language. Although in general it doesn't matter what program you use to edit your C# source files, there are benefits to using more powerful editors and environments designed for C# development. Knowing the options and switches of the C# compiler will allow you to take control of how MSIL code is generated by the compiler. You can explore that code by using tools such as ILDASM, included with the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK.

The structure of C# programs provides for a number of features designed to make programs safer, easier to write, and less bug-prone. Included in this feature set are namespaces and the using directive. Finally, naming conventions, which include specific casing conventions, can make programs more readable and easier to maintain.