R1D15 Methods and Exception Handling in C# and Azure Notebooks
I wrapped up the Introduction to C# course today by reviewing methods and exception handling in C#. Like Java C# supports access controls such as private, public, protected, and static.
My certificate is “signed” by Satya Nadella, which motivates me.

C# Methods
I've never quite understood when the right time to use these types of access modifiers is. Conceptually it makes perfect sense, but I supposed I have not done enough OOP to come accross a case where I wouldn't just want every single method to be public. From my understanding, it has to do with API design (in the strict sense of API not just "REST"). The whole purpose of OOP is to encapsulate pieces of code for further reuse. Public, private, static, and protected are meant to enforce the API contract that another developer using your library might be trying to implement.You do not need to understand how the code in a method works. You may not even have access to the code, if it is in a class in an assembly for which you do not have the source, such as the .NET Framework class library.This is something I hope to investigate and learn more about in the next few courses of this series.
I learned about ref and out, which are a bit strange to me. They allow you to return multiple values from a method call without having the method itself return anything at all. In python if we want to return multiple values we would usually return an array or some other list.
I also learned that you are able to used named parameters in C# methods. This is really cool. If you have a complex method that takes many optional arguments, you can specify the specific ones that you want by name. Or if you want to reduce ambiguity for which parameters are being passed in you can give them a name. I think this makes code a lot more readable.
C# Exception Handling
I also learned about C# Exception handling. This is actually something that I already knew a bit about since I spent a few yeasrs of my life in a previous job staring at C# call stacks trying to figure out what went wrong.Overall Impressions
Overall, the course was fine. I think it was a bit short and I wish that it would have had more non trivial example problems. I am still going to keep going and start the next course in the series, Object Oriented Programming In C#, tomorrow.Azure Notebooks
I also spent a little bit of time playing around with Azure Notebooks. It is basically Jupyter as a service. I have used Jupyter quite a bit. Not so much for data science, but more for exploring various API's in python along with notes. Azure notebooks is free to get started so if you have never played with Jupyter before I think its definitely worth checking out.Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- 21st Century C++ from Communications of the ACM
- Submarines DevCon 2025 Keynote Speech from JoshHaines.com
- How I Use AI: Meet My Promptly Hired Model Intern from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
- DeepSeek from Maggie Appleton
- Digital Reality Digital Shock from Christopher Butler
- 10 habits to help becoming a Debian Maintainer from Optimized by Otto
- Tiny corners from Manuel Moreale RSS Feed
- Build It Yourself from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
“Stop calling it work” – Cedric Raguenaud
Cedric Raguenaud argues that.. “When we label our photographic pursuits as “work,” we unconsciously impose constraints and expectations that belong in the professional world. Suddenly, we feel pressured to maintain visibility, chase originality, and demon…
via Colin Devroe February 10, 2025The Art of Making Websites
Hidde de Vries gave a great talked titled “Creativity cannot be computed” (you can checkout the slides or watch the video). In his slides he has lots of bullet points that attempt to define what art is, and then in the talk he spends time covering each one…
via Jim Nielsen’s Blog February 10, 2025Corporate “DEI” is an imperfect vehicle for deeply meaningful ideals
I have not thought or said much about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) over the years. Not because I don’t care about the espoused ideals — I suppose I do, rather a lot — but because corporate DEI efforts have always struck me as ineffective and blan…
via charity.wtf February 10, 2025Generated by openring