System.NewBee.Me == Bob

Question

Wow I have read through a lot of the posts and must say it is a little intimidating. As you can probably tell I am very new to this stuff but am having a blast learning what I can. If someone would be willing to indulge me I have what I'm sure is a VERY basic question. My main goal here is to clarify some of the information that is now swimming in my head. As I understand things so far... In very general terms the namespace defines what is local to that section of code. Items such as System and Console are objects? Items that follow objects such as in Console.WriteLine are members? --It seems that I have seen these items also referenced as namespace are these terms interchangable? --It also seems like I have seen what I mentioned above as Objects are also refered to as Classes or am I totally missing something? when it comes to Namespace's Objects Classes Methods Functions etc.. does anyone have any advice for keeping them all straight? Does it just boil down to time and practice? Any assistance you folks would be willing to provide in helping along my educational process would be very much appreciated. -Bob

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Bob we can try to answer your questions but the best way to answer these questions you need to find a book or document on Object oriented basics. That's the place where these terms are specified (namespace will not be there ;) but classes objects methods... will there). James already answered some of them. Here are few of them again presented in different way. Namespace - is a way to orgazine a group of funcitonality in multiple classes structures and enumerations. So when you say a namespace its a logical grouping of these times. So you can organize them under one umbrella. For example System namespace is a logical grouping of classes structures and enumerations that defines system related functionality. Another example say you are a company ABC. You have classes for database for UI and for business logic. You can have namespaces ABC.Data ABC.UI ABC.BusinessLogic to put your database UI and business logic related functionality respectively. As James said Functions are obselete in .NET. The term used is Methods. So if somebody is talking about functions they actually are talking about methods. Methods defined some code that does something. For example Add method can add two numbers. NOTE: There are a few basic articles in C# Language section of this site. You may want to read them to learn these concepts in more details. Objects are instances of classes. For example Man can be a class that defines what a man can have. For example a man has legs eyes color hair (these are properties) and man can walk talk work (these are methods). So Man class itself is a type or concepts or a definition. When you say Man is a class means nothing but a definition. But when you say an object means something is there. For example you and I are objects of Man class. We have those properties and methods. There is much more about all these. Too much to type. Again look at Language section and read articles there about these concepts.

james · Answer

Hi Bob well this is kind of a general question on the layour of .Net apps but I'll try to clear it up for you a bit... Namespaces.. Namespace are just what you said a way of definining whats local to the code and a way to organize you classes (using a tree-structure idea). There is a difference between Objects and Classes but not a big one and not one that you need to make a big distinction about at this point in your .Net experience. For the most part you can use the term interchangeable. Keep in mind that everything in the .Net framework is derived from System.Object. Functions ... don't exist in this world what you know as functions are called Methods. A class can have all of the following members... Methods Properties Enumerators Variables (and static members AKA constants) Constructors (which are really just Methods called when a class is created) Events Structures ... I'm sure I'm leaving something out here but those are the main types of members of a class. I hope that helps a bit. -James