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.
- Deeper dive: Were Touch Bar’s problems software rather than hardware? from Unsung
- Joining Cursor from Fatih Arslan
- Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
- The default person from https://popagandhi.com/
- No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
- Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Have You Heard the Good News About Microlighter?
Dave Rupert wrote about shipping microlighter: a tool for handling syntax highlighting using the CSS Custom Highlights API. I saw his post the day he released it, and I had an implementation PR up for my blog by end of day. Then, like I do with so many thi...
via Jim Nielsen’s Blog August 25, 2026Two previews for the price of one
A thoughtful moment in the Arrange Displays pop-up in macOS’s Settings when you choose to designate a screen to be a primary screen: It not only shows a nice preview of where your menu is going to land, but also changes the shape of the menu proxy you’re h...
via Unsung August 25, 2026Pluralistic: How Canada can help Americans and defeat America (23 Aug 2026)
Today's links How Canada can save Americans and defeat America: True Carneyism has never been tried. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Brazil v AIDS drug patents; TSA v gel-bras; After the Siege (Russian); Names are hard; Layton's...
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow August 24, 2026Generated by openring