The Challenge

[MUSIC] 0:00 Hi everyone, this is James. 0:04 In this C# practice session, you'll get a chance to practice writing loops and 0:06 conditional statements using C#. 0:11 It reinforces what you'd learned in stage three of the C# basics course. 0:13 If you have a difficult time completing this practice session, 0:18 you might need to review that course. 0:22 See the teacher's notes for a link. 0:24 I have attached a workspace to his video. 0:26 Go ahead and open the workspace or download the project files 0:28 if you want to use an external editor or an IDE like Visual Studio. 0:33 The program.cs file contains a single main method. 0:38 You'll write all of the code for your program in this method. 0:42 To complete this practice session, read through the to-do code comments and 0:46 complete each one. 0:50 The purpose of this program is to prompt the user for 0:52 a number, calculate the square of the provided number, and display the result. 0:54 Let's see the completed program in action. 1:00 First, we need to view the console. 1:03 So, I'll click on View > Show Console. 1:05 Remember, to compile a C# file, we use the mcs command. 1:09 Then, to run the program, we use the mono command. 1:17 See the teacher's notes, if you need a refresher on either of those commands. 1:24 Notice that the program prompts me for a number, I'll enter 2. 1:28 Then it displays the square of my provided number. 1:34 2 multiplied by itself is equal to 4, we can enter another number. 1:37 Or type the text quit to terminate execution of the program. 1:43 Let's review each of the to-do comments in the program.cs file. 1:48 Our first task is to declare a boolean variable named keepGoing and 1:54 assign it a value of true. 1:58 You use these variable to know when to exit the while loop. 2:01 Speaking of the while loop, your next task is to define a while loop. 2:04 You want to keep looping as long as the variable keepGoing has a value of true. 2:09 Just inside of the while loop, you want to prompt the user with the text, 2:14 enter a number. 2:18 And assign their value to a string variable named entry. 2:19 Then you'll want an if statement that checks to see if the user 2:24 entered the text quit. 2:27 And if they did enter the text quit, you'll want to exit the program. 2:30 And if the user didn't enter the text quit, 2:34 you want to parse the users entry to an integer. 2:38 Then you want to take that number and square it. 2:42 You can do this by multiplying the number by itself. 2:46 Once you have the square of the number, you want to output the result. 2:50 So for example, output the text, the square of 2 is 4. 2:54 Or maybe 2 multiplied by itself is equal to 4. 3:01 Whatever you want to do, the choice is yours. 3:07 Then after exiting the loop, let's output the text goodbye 3:11 just to let the user know that the program has finished running. 3:15 Notice that the code comments are indented 3:18 to reflect what the overall structure of the program should look like. 3:21 You can use this as a guide when you're writing your code. 3:25 If reading or writing to the console is unfamiliar to you, 3:27 be sure to review the second stage in the C# basics course. 3:31 Or see the teacher's notes for 3:35 a link to another practice session that will help you practice those skills. 3:36 Okay, there is a lot here just take it one step at a time, you've got this. 3:41 And don't forget, practice is an important part of the learning process. 3:46 The more that you do the better that your retention of the material will be. 3:52 And if you get stuck at any point, see the teachers knows for hands and 3:56 links to videos. 4:00 That cover what you need to know in order to complete the session. 4:02 And if you aren't able to fully complete the program don't worry. 4:06 I'll show you how I completed the to-dos in the next video. 4:10 Good luck and we'll see you in a bit. 4:13