C# Brain Teasers

C++ is famous for getting all the default behaviors wrong and for sometimes making demons fly out of your nose. Through 25 puzzles, from the useful to the outright weird, we explore some of C++'s most interesting quirks. How does initialization actually work? Do temporaries even exist? Why is `+!!"" ` a valid expression in C++? As you work through each puzzle, you will peel off some of the layers of complexity of C++, getting a fundamental understanding of how the language works. This will help you write better code and recognize issues more easily while debugging. Each puzzle in the book is a complete, seemingly simple C++ program, but can you figure out the output for each, or will the answers stump you? Most of the programs compile and have deterministic, though sometimes surprising, output. Some might, however, have undefined behavior, where anything can happen, including making demons fly out of your nose! Yet others might have unspecified behavior with output that is not completely deterministic; we just know nothing as bad as nasal demons will happen. All puzzles are accompanied by detailed discussions, taking a look under the hood at what exactly is going on to help you understand more about C++'s unexpected behaviors, as well as fundamental concepts like initialization, overload resolution, and implicit conversions. For the non-deterministic cases, we'll explore some typical behaviors one can expect to see in practice, what causes them, and why they shouldn't be relied on. After working through the book, you'll have tools and techniques to help you write better and safer code, and a better understanding of the fundamentals of the language, the background for some of C++'s apparent weirdness, and a better feel for identifying bugs and unsafe code in your own programs. What You Need: The book assumes basic knowledge of C++. If you want to run the programs yourself, you can use either a local C++ compiler or the online compilers at https://godbolt.org.

C# is a deceptively easy language to learn, but you'll soon discover that its underlying complexity conceals many pitfalls for the unwary programmer. C# Brain Teasers exposes some of those perils in the form of puzzles to test and expand your knowledge of C#, and shows how to avoid or defeat them using simple and modern techniques. Whether you're fairly new to C# or an experienced veteran, this book is sure to improve your understanding of C#, and boost your productivity. Although C#'s designers have ensured that new features play nicely with long-standing mechanisms, C#'s complexity means it has many dark corners to explore. This book shines a light into a few of those places to help you write better C# programs and more deeply understand how to use its features safely and to your advantage. The puzzles in C# Brain Teasers cover a broad section of C# features. You'll work from common issues associated with loops, methods, and numbers, through more complex concepts such as exceptions and object lifetime. You'll see some more advanced topics such as the intricacies of type conversions, object construction and initialization, and pattern matching. Along the way we'll investigate some of the hazards associated with asynchronous methods, the Dispose method for explicit lifetime management, primary constructors, and more. At each step you'll learn to identify problems and ways to avoid them. C# Brain Teasers is not just a show-and-tell. Each puzzle spotlights a real-world problem that you'll be able to recognize in your own programs, and learn how to fix or avoid it.

C++ is famous for getting all the default behaviors wrong and for sometimes making demons fly out of your nose. Through 25 puzzles, from the useful to the outright weird, we explore some of C++'s most interesting quirks. How does initialization actually work? Do temporaries even exist? Why is +!!"" a valid expression in C++? As you work through each puzzle, you will peel off some of the layers of complexity of C++, getting a fundamental understanding of how the language works. This will help you write better code and recognize issues more easily while debugging. Each puzzle in the book is a complete, seemingly simple C++ program, but can you figure out the output for each, or will the answers stump you? Most of the programs compile and have deterministic, though sometimes surprising, output. Some might, however, have undefined behavior, where anything can happen, including making demons fly out of your nose! Yet others might have unspecified behavior with output that is not completely deterministic; we just know nothing as bad as nasal demons will happen. All puzzles are accompanied by detailed discussions, taking a look under the hood at what exactly is going on to help you understand more about C++'s unexpected behaviors, as well as fundamental concepts like initialization, overload resolution, and implicit conversions. For the non-deterministic cases, we'll explore some typical behaviors one can expect to see in practice, what causes them, and why they shouldn't be relied on. After working through the book, you'll have tools and techniques to help you write better and safer code, and a better understanding of the fundamentals of the language, the background for some of C++'s apparent weirdness, and a better feel for identifying bugs and unsafe code in your own programs. What You Need: The book assumes basic knowledge of C++. If you want to run the programs yourself, you can use either a local C++ compiler or the online compilers at https: //godbolt.org.