Topic 5

Lesson 5. Basic .Net libraries. Collections.

Objective: is to form in students a holistic system of knowledge about collections as a standardized means of processing groups of objects in the .NET environment. The student must master the fundamental concepts of abstract data types, such as list, stack, and queue, and also understand the advantages of using built-in data structures to reduce the complexity of development. During the training, special attention is paid to studying the architecture of the System.Collections namespace, the hierarchy of interfaces (IEnumerable, ICollection, IList, IDictionary), and the role of enumerators in providing standardized element-by-element access to the contents of any collection. Students must master practical skills in working with general-purpose collections, in particular dynamic arrays (ArrayList), stacks (Stack), queues (Queue), and hash tables (Hashtable), distinguishing between their LIFO and FIFO maintenance principles. An important aspect is the formation of the ability to compare dynamic structures with standard fixed-length arrays, effectively manage the capacity of collections through the Capacity property, and implement user-defined sorting criteria through the IComparer interface. In addition, the course involves mastering hashing mechanisms for quickly searching for key-value pairs and understanding the differences between general-purpose, special-purpose, and bit-oriented collections. As a result of studying the material, the student should be able to analyze applied problems to select the most adequate data structure, programmatically implement complex information processing algorithms (for example, checking the balance of parentheses or working with telephone directories), and optimize the use of system resources when manipulating large volumes of objects.