This is a question that might have been asked to you many many times, and you probably know the answer too – something whose value can vary ! This is correct, no doubt , but we need some other understanding for this. Let us see what it is :

We know that in real world everything occupies space. You need to keep your laptop, you need space, you need to park your motor cycle, you need space. You need to park your car, you need space. You need to park a bus , you need space. You need to park an airplane, you need space. Any object in this world occupies space.

Now look at the above statements:

To keep your laptop you need not more than 2ft by 2ft space. It can be kept in this much space. Now can you park your motor cycle in 2ft by 2ft space ? Definitely not. You need around 8 ft by 3 ft space. Similarly can you park your car in 8ft by 3ft? again no, you need around 15ft by  5ft to park your car. Then bus needs even more space than a car and an airplane needs even more space than a bus. If we put them in order

Space needed by laptop < space needed by motor cycle < space needed by a car < space needed by a bus < space needed by an airplane.

The above statement talks about space space space space….. and space. This is what we need to keep our things.

Now if I give you a 2ft by 2ft table, how many laptops can you keep in that space ? Only one. Sometimes you can keep your laptop there, sometime your friends laptop, sometimes your fathers laptop, sometimes your brothers laptop. So the 2ft by 2ft table that was given can keep many laptops but not all together, one at a time.

We call this table as a variable. It is fixed and does not change, but the laptops kept on keep changing. If we think of this table as a laptop container, the container does not change, but its contents change.

In the programming world RAM is our earth. We keep everything in RAM. When we have to keep something in our RAM we need to tell how much space we need. This is what is done by data types. If you need to keep a laptop in RAM, this is what you write :

Laptop l;

This will tell the RAM that we need 2ft by 2ft space in it ( considering our RAM as our earth ) and it will provide the same space to us and will also tell us the location where it gave us that space. We can then use that space to store many laptops, but one at a time. Now if you will ask it to keep an airplane in that space, it will give you an error, it will tell you that its too small to keep an airplane.

If we talk in pure programming sense :

We have been provided different data types which need different amount of space in RAM. We have :

1)    Integers
2)    Characters
3)    Floats
4)    Strings

These basic datatypes form the building blocks of other complex things that we do. Their space requirement can be compared as follows:

Space needed by char < space needed by int = space needed by float < space needed by a string.

So when we write the following line

char c;
We are asking the system to give us space to keep a character in RAM. When that space will be given to us then we can keep many characters over there, but one at a time. I can keep ‘a’ and then ‘b’ , but when I keep ‘b’ it will remove ‘a’ from there. So it will hold only 1 at a time.

Now if we ask the system to keep an integer value in the space it gave us for a character, it will give us an error telling us that integer needs more space, it cannot be kept in the space of a character.

So whenever we create variables in memory, we get space according to their size and we can keep data of the same type in that space and then perform our operations. A formal definition of a variable would be :
A location in memory whose address is fixed but whose contents can change.

 This is a series of tutorials I wish to write that will help you build an understand of the programming concepts using C programming language. Generally people have a fear programming and they do not understand which language to choose from and which language to pursue with. I wish to put forward a few of my experiences to explain few concepts that will help you make a good understanding of this programming world and help you choose a programming language of your choice.

Why should I learn C when I have other advance languages like C++, C#, Java too choose from ?

The C programming language helps you build an understanding of the general programming concepts like :

1)    What is a variable.
2)    What is a pointer.
3)    What are conditional statements.
4)    What are loops
5)    What are switch statements.
6)    What are functions.

Now these above concepts are required for writing logic in any programming language of this world. You will have to learn these things even if you start programming with C++, C# or Java. Without understanding these, you cant write logic and thus you cant write a program.

You can definitely learn all these things using other advanced language in this world, but they do not start from simple concepts. They will directly start from object oriented concepts. If you read a book on C++ you will be told that there is something called a class, and it’s a combination of data members and functions. Now if you have never read C or any other programming language and you directly start from C++, how can you understand what a class is when you have no idea about data and functions ? Forget about putting logic in your class, when you don’t understand how it is written, the story ends there itself.

So we need to understand the above concepts which will help us write logic and therefore good programs and therefore good software. I don’t tell you that C is powerful or C++, C# or Java is powerful. I just tell you that there is a way we learn , and that way is learning things from simple concepts to advanced concepts.

Learning and practicing C will help you learn and practice simple concepts first and then you may move to latest programming languages to write complex stuff.

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Probably the most frequently asked question in the .net world is – What is .net framework ? Whether someone understands .net programming or not, whether someone understands C#, VB.net , ADO.net , Silverlight, WPF, XAML, WCF or not, but they definitely understand the word .net framework. Its the most fundamental thing that you need to understand about .net programming. Lets try and understand the meaning of .net framework in very simple terms.

When you want to play a song, you need a media player – .net framework !

Well this is something very very fundamental and we all understand this. When you need to play a song, you never open it with a notepad ! Why ? Because notepad does not understand the format of an mp3 file. Similarly every compiled program, it might be written using c, c++, java or .net , has a given format. And we need another software program to understand that format and play that program.

.net framework is the media player for all programs written in C#, VB.net or any other .net language. When you run a .net program , you need the .net framework to understand its format and show you the output.

You can record a song with any device, an mp3 player will play it – CLR !

You can record your voice with a cell phone, a laptop or any other recording device and an mp3 player will play it. How ? When you record a sound with any device and save it in mp3 format, any mp3 media player in this world will understand the format and play that sound. This is similar to a CLR – Common Language Runtime .

There are many different languages supported in .net, C# and VB.net are the most widely known and used. Think of C# and VB.net as two different recording devices. Then there is something called MSIL – Microsoft Intermediate Language. Think of MSIL as the mp3 format. And finally think of .net framework as the media player which plays the MSIL format. Look at the diagram below :

The above diagram show the similarity between CLR and Media players. You can use any .net programming language and compile your program. You will get MSIL as output. This MSIL is same, whether you write your program in c# or in vb.net. Then the CLR will be called to finally execute your program and show the output.

.net is platform independent

.net is a platform independent technology. What does this mean ? It basically means that when you compile your program and get the MSIL format, you can run it on any operating system given that you have CLR on that system. For example you can play a song on windows and also on linux , given that both these system have mp3 players installed. If you dont have an mp3 player on linux, you will not be able to play the song over there. CLR is provided by Microsoft for different operating systems. Where ever you have the CLR installed, you can execute your .net program, irrespective of the operating system and CPU in that machine.

In the end, technical definition

.net framework comprises of set of common classes (library) created by Microsoft that  is needed to compile and execute programs written in C#, VB.net or any other .net programming language. These classes provides the base functionality needed by all .net programs. The .net framework comprises of the Common Language Infrastructure and Common Language Runtime. When you have an executable file written and compiled using .net, .net framework is needed to execute it.

There are many different terms associated with Microsoft products. When ever a new version of the .net framework is released, the naming pattern of the version numbers tells us many things about it. The naming pattern of the versions is as follows

major_version . minor_version

When ever the major version changes, it means some substantial changes have been done to the framework. When ever the minor version changes, it means that a few portions of the .net framework have been affected.

First lets understand all the versions of the .net framework.

1.0

This was the very first version of the .net framework.

1.1

As there is only a change in the minor version (from 1.0 to 1.1) , and that too a small change, it means only a small portion of the .net framework changed. Following were the changes done in the 1.1 version

• Built-in support for mobile ASP.NET controls. Previously available as an add-on for .NET Framework, now part of the framework.
• Security changes – enable Windows Forms assemblies to execute in a semi-trusted manner from the Internet, and enable Code Access Security in ASP.NET applications.
• Built-in support for ODBC and Oracle databases. Previously available as an add-on for .NET Framework 1.0, now part of the framework.
• .NET Compact Framework – a version of the .NET Framework for small devices.
• Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support.
• Numerous API changes.

2.0

As the major version changed, this means there were some substantial changes done in this version. The changes are as follows

• Generics
• Language support for generics built directly into the .NET CLR.
• SQL Server integration – .NET 2.0, VS 2005, and SQL Server 2005 are all tied together. This means that instead of using T-SQL, one can build stored procedures and triggers in any of the .NET-compatible languages.
• Many additional and improved ASP.NET web controls.
• New data controls with declarative data binding.
• New personalization features for ASP.NET, such as support for themes, skins, master pages and webparts.
• .NET Micro Framework – a version of the .NET Framework related to the Smart Personal Objects Technology initiative.
• Membership provider
• Partial classes
• Nullable types
• Anonymous methods
• Iterators
• Data tables

3.0

Again as there is a change in the major version, it means many things changed in this version too. The changes in this version were

3 new technologies were added to the framework – WPF, WWF, WCF.
Also a new version of C# was released with this framework.

3.5

Now as the minor version changed, it only had relatively small changes. These were the changes

Changes to asp.net
LINQ introduced

4.0

This was again a major change. It included the DLR (dynamic language run time ), parallel programming, changes to asp.net, new version of C# etc

Alright, now that you are reading this article, it means you are about to appear for some interview – definitely !! Obviously you wont read this article just for fun . There is always a bit of nervousness before you appear for some interview, but just dont worry, its all natural. We all are humans, and being nervous is never a bad thing. It keeps you mentally alert, you stay focused on your task and make extra efforts for winning. So being nervous is good in a way. Lets now just focus on giving you some real helpful tips on preparing for your interview. These are not just tips, these are from my personal interviewing experience. I have conducted over 100+ interviews till date and have learnt quite many things which will be helpful to you when you will appear for your interview.

Lets be practical

I shall keep my article very much practical. Lets not try and give you some feel good factor that “O dont worry, everything will be fine. You will do good, you will succeed for sure….”. Well you wont, if you dont make sincere efforts to succeed. You need to understand one important thing, which will help you perform your best during any interview you appear for – “Success cannot be guaranteed, it can only be attained”. All that you can do is give your best shot sincerely and leave the rest to nature. Let the nature decide whether you fit in for the job you are appearing for or not.

First thing first

The very first thing to understand is, are you seriously interested in the job you are appearing for ? Does it matter a lot to you, will you be hurt a lot if you are not able to clear the interview. If the answer to these questions is no, then definitely you will not be giving your best shot. If you enter the interview room half hearted, trust me you will fail. This is because the interviewer will come to know after a very brief conversation with you that you are not 100% interested in this job. And no one would like to appoint an employee who is not serious enough for his / her job.

So the first thing is that you prepare yourself for the interview in a way that this is the last interview of your life and you have to, have to succeed. This feeling will give you mental strength to focus on each and every small thing that might matter there during interview time.

Dress up for the occasion

Now how to dress. What to wear and what not to wear. Please dont expect that i will tell you “wear formals for the interview, you should look like a typical corporate person etc”. All i would tell you is, dress for the occasion. By this i mean that you should understand the job profile that you will be offered if you clear the interview. You need to dress up in a way that you justify it to the interviewer that he wont be making a mistake by appointing you for that position. Now if the job post demands you to have a casual look, be smartly dress and look fresh whole day ( say you have a PRO job where you will have to meet people whole day ) and you wear a serious suit on the interview day, the interviewer will not be able to visualize you in the role that he is sitting there to offer you. So just wear something that helps the interviewer visualize you in the job role and can help him judge your potential in that role appropriately.

Now if you are appearing for some intellectual job, like some technical job or some finance job, your outer appearance should do the talking for you. You should dress up in a way which shows that you are not some confused personality, you are not someone who is messed up inside his mind. Dress up in a very clean and soothing manner which should tell the other person who you are. If you are appearing for some software job, your appearance should be like that of a software engineer. If you are appearing for a financial advisor job, your appearance should be like that of a financial advisor.

A small tip to help you decide how to dress – “Dress the way you want people to see you. If you want people to consider you a successful person, dress like a successful person. If you want people to consider you a responsible person, a dependable person, dress like one. You outer appearance speaks a hell lot about who you are.”

Arrange your documents properly

You have spent your whole life earning the documents you will be carrying with you in the interview room. If you have worked so hard to earn those documents, you can put in some thought and effort in arranging them properly so that the interviewer gets a pretty good idea about your skill set. Arrange the documents in a way that they should depict your strength, not your weakness. Lets say you were never good at academics, but you were always good at sports. Being good at sports speaks a lot about you. You cannot be a good sportsperson if you are not hardworking and dedicated, if you are not regular for your game, if you are not passionate, if you are not a good team player, if you are not intelligent as no game can be played without having a reasonable amount of intelligence. So if you are a good sportsperson, project that to the interviewer by arranging your sports documents on the top and your academic documents at the bottom. Let the interviewer look at your strengths first.

Do some study about the company and your job profile

Think about it this way, if you have a job at hand and you have 5 friends between whom you have to choose the best for that job, how will you choose. You will definitely consider the friend which you know is reliable, trustworthy of completing the job. When the interviewer interviews many candidates he wants to find the best one possible for the job. Now for that he might ask you a few questions  like “Why do you want to join our company”, or “If we select you for the job, how will you perform the XYZ task”. What they want to know basically is that do you really understand what you are supposed to do, or you just read about the job vacancy and just showed up. Remember majority of the candidates wont do any research on the job they are appearing for. Your smartness at this end will help you in impressing the interviewer by your prompt reply to these questions which are quite likely to be asked to you.

Be a good listener

Talk less and to the point, dont just change the track of the conversation by your directionless talking and waste time during the interview. The best way to do less talking and keeping the conversation on track, atleast from your side, is by being a good listener. By acting as a good listener you will be benefiting in a lot many ways, you will understand the question properly, you will understand the expectations of the interviewer properly, you will understand the context of the question being asked properly and can then frame your answer accordingly. Therefore by being a good listener you can impress the interviewer with your smart answers and to the point conversation skills.

In the end, prepare your subjects properly

What matters the most in the interview is that how you are with your subjects. If you feel that you are weak in your subjects, focus the most on it rather than doing other preparations. If you fail to answer the set of most important questions which are asked from your own subjects, you end up killing the whole chance of clearing the interview. You should be confident with your subjects, if not thorough. The answers you provide should be correct and the ones you dont know just leave them. It should be all in black and white. You answer what you know and you just leave what you dont know. Dont try to make things gray by trying to answer every question. That would go negative for you, as the interviewer will feel that you are trying too hard to answer when you dont know the answer. So its better to say “im sorry, i have no clue for this question” !

This is not all

There are many things which matter during the interview time. I have only mentioned a few in this article. Will talk about other things in coming articles on this same topic.

Till then, thanks for reading and all the very best for your interview. Let me know by your comments to this post if you got your dream job, i shall be happy to be a part of your happiness

Hopefully you have gone through the first part of this series and are now aware of the prerequisites for learning C# programming. You need to have some programming experience on object oriented programming languages to learn C#. In case you already understand some object oriented language ( say C++ ), then it will be extremely easy for you to understand C#.

An important tip

Do not focus on learning C# as a language, focus on learning C# as a technology, as a tool and try to understand what all powerful things you can do with C#. C# is a programming language you use to write programs that utilizes the power of the .net framework. So its less important to understand C# but its more important to understand the .net framework itself. People end up getting caught the concepts of C# and all, what they dont realize is that these are not C# concepts, these are the .net framework concepts, C# is just a medium of implementing these concepts.

For example let say that you are trying to learn how to write a poem. Now what is more important for you to understand – writing English or the art of writing a poem. Of course learning the art is more important, otherwise each individual on this earth who knows how to write English would have been writing poems. Similarly you need to focus on the art, on the concepts itself rather than focusing on C#. Treat C#as a medium for implementing your thoughts and the .net framework as the set of rules which guide you towards this process.

“What ever we are learning involves the .net framework in one way or the other”

What do i need to start C# programming

Well setting up the environment is the first and the most important step towards programming. When we say the environment, we mean everything you need to complete a task should be present on your computer. For C# programming, you need the following on your computer

1) The .net framework installed

2) The Visual Studio IDE installed

When we say IDE, we mean an Integrated Development Environment. Its a highly advanced editor that helps you write C# code, compile it, displays all the errors and warning right there, helps you debug the code, gives you intellisense to guide to while writing code etc. Its a much powerful editor than just using a basic notepad for writing code.

How to install both

All that you need to do is install the studio and the .net framework will be taken care of by the studio installation process. Visual Studio express version ( which is not a professional version and does not have all features of this powerful IDE ) can be downloaded for free from Microsoft’s website. There are different express versions of the studio depending on what you intend to do. We over here intend to program using C#, so we need to download the express version of studio that helps you program using C#. The latest version of the studio is 2010. You can download the Visual C# 2010 from here http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/visual-csharp-express

Once you have downloaded and installed the studio, you will be ready for the next step towards learning C#.

Welcome to this series of tutorials on C# programming language. The world of software engineering is filled with programming language and sometimes it becomes very hard to understand what this whole mess is all about and which programming language to use when and where. C# is a programming language that gives you the power to write computer programs that uses the full power of the .net framework created by Microsoft. Now if you are new to the world of manage languages, you will be wondering right now that what is .net framework. And what is this word “managed language” ? Further you need Visual Studio to program using C#, although its not a mandatory requirement, but its an extremely power IDE to help you program using C# and Microsoft’s .net framework. Hhh…. C#, .net framework, managed languages, Visual Studio, IDE , what the hell !

If you are new to the world of programming, you need to understand one thing right away, programming is the simplest thing you can do in your life. And i seriously mean it. Its probably more easier that any other task that you do in your daily life. The reason behind it being easy is that its all logical. There is nothing you need to cram or remember when it comes to programming. And specially when it comes to programming using Microsoft technologies, boy, its deadly easy ! The only and most basic requirement of learning programming and then engineering is common sense and a respectful IQ level. So just remember this tip and get ready to take a dive into the fascinating world of programming.

Are you totally new to programming ?

If yes, then this is not the place you should start learning C#. The reason is very simple, C# is a programming language. It helps you implement your thinking in an Object Oriented manner. Now if you are new to programming you probably do not understand what is Object Oriented Programming. So you need to go to google first and learn about OOP. In case you think at this point that you will continue reading the C# tutorials and then go back and search google for OOPs and other basic programming concepts, then you will be making a big mistake. For keeping programming simple and easy, you need to do the right things in the right sequence.

Do you have a programming background ?

If yes, then which programming language are you aware of ? Basically programming languages are of the following types :

1) Procedural languages

Languages like C, PHP4 etc are procedural languages. They revolve around the concept of functions. The whole program is divided into small set of functions and these functions are called in a sequence in which they full fill the given task. Information is passed to the functions as arguments and processed data is taken back from the functions in the form of return statements. When learning or working with procedural programming , your full focus is on understanding functions.

2) Declarative langauges

Languages like SQL come under the category of a declarative language. This is because when working with such languages you never have to understand how the work is being done inside, all that you need to learn is that what you want as an output and for getting that output what you need to write. The inner complexities of doing things are taken care of by the technology. In contrast to the procedural languages concept, where you write everything from scratch and you shape the code and the output, in declarative languages you just specify in a given structured manner the code and you get the output. No need to understand how the work was done actually inside the box !

It wont be wrong if we say that programming using procedural languages is like a white box approach, you know exactly what was written inside the system and how is works. Working with declarative languages is like a black box approach, all that you know is how to get the output, you have no understanding of how the work was done inside the box.

3) Object Oriented Languages

Well, this is a totally different beast. I strongly suggest that you think of Object Oriented Languages as a best combination of procedural and declarative languages blended with the concept of objects. To put it very simply, right now you are reading this article using your computer (hopefully). Now for this article reading process to be full filled you need to take the help of a keyboard to type in the information to reach this blog ( either directly or via google ), mouse to navigate between screens, monitor to show you the content etc. Now the keyboard is an object, so is the mouse and so is the monitor. All these objects are playing their separate but important role in the functioning of the whole system. They are not working sequentially, you can be using the keyboard and mouse at the same time. The important thing is that all these objects are needed for the system to work.

Now C# is an object oriented language. Which means that in case you have a programming background but it is not using object oriented languages, you need to again go back and understand what OOP is. Either follow some good book or just read through google to understand OOP. Dont just read about OOP and come back, read about it, understand it, have it very much clear in your head and then start reading further on .net and C#.

How do we plan to proceed ?

The challenge here is not to make you understand C#, that you can probably go and read from any other blog or site and you will understand that its just another programming language which is object oriented , you can perform blah blah blah operations using C#, can do blah blah blah tricks using it etc. The challenge is to put it in your head that there are many different things which come together to help you code applications using C#. And you need to understand all those things in a given manner to take the full advantage of the .net framework, Visual Studio IDE and the C# programming language.

We shall continue discussing about C# in articles to come.

Thanks for reading.

 Placementcafe.com – What is the meaning of typedef in c / c++

Placementcafe.com – What is the meaning of typedef in c / c++

typedef is used to provide alternate names to existing datatypes in c or c++. It helps you write a program that is easy to read and write. A very basic example of typedef would be to understand how the following simple program.

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Hello world program using fortran

Placementcafe.com – Hello world program using fortran

As per convention whenever you start learning any programming language, you start with a hello world program. Now that you have decided to go with the fortran programming language, here is a very basic hello world program to get you started with fortran.

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