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.
Most popular posts this month
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- Using cgit
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- Setting up ANTLR4 on Windows
- Making cgit Pretty
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- 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
- No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
- Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf
- The logical destination of LLMs from Andy Bell
- Revised rules of engineering leadership. from Irrational Exuberance
- The circus freaks of open source from Drew DeVault's blog
- Clanker: A Word For The Machine from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Hacking Workshop for September 2026
I'm pleased to announce that David Rowley will be joining us in September to discuss his talk Optimizing code in the hot path; with examples from tuple deformation. If you're interesting in joining us, please sign up using this form and I will send you an...
via Robert Haas July 31, 2026One and one thing only
I wanted to show you a year’s worth of messages from my barber’s software, because this is what software should be. No spam, no upsells, no growth hacks, no unwelcome cuteness or puzzling verbosity. It’s so curt and straight to the point it should be set i...
via Unsung July 31, 2026Pluralistic: Better to beg forgiveness (31 Jul 2026)
Today's links Better to beg forgiveness: Don't ring the doorbell at the house of no unless you absolutely must. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: RIP Poul Anderson; P2P at PC Forum; Waitress handed her own stolen ID by carded dine...
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow July 31, 2026Generated by openring