54 C# Interview Questions and Answers for 2024

C# developers are in high demand today. Entrepreneurs, managers, and CTOs alike are competing to build the best C# and .NET applications. Knowing how to structure your interviews to find the top developers will make sure you stay competitive. In this guide, you‘ll find example interview questions to help you do exactly that.

First Things First: Select Your Job Requirements

The C# or C Sharp object-oriented programming language was developed by Microsoft to be used for countless different mobile or web applications. It is designed for a common language infrastructure. It is a managed language compiled by the .Net framework to generate Microsoft intermediate language. To find the C# developer with the right skills for your specific project you need to dig right down and define your job requirements.

Some example C# requirements include:

• Programming skills – E.g. Object-Oriented Language Design
• C# specific skills – E.g. Multithreading
• .NET Library/toolkit experience
• Design skills – Performance optimization, building scalable applications, concurrency
• Communication skills – Discussing problems and constraints
• Initiative – If they‘ll have to figure out solutions by themselves

It‘s tempting to include as many skills as possible on the list for your perfect developer. However, you‘ll actually want to keep the list as short as possible. You want to focus your interview on identifying the depth of knowledge in areas that are most important to your project.

Once you know your job requirements, you can use them to pick the right questions for your interviews.

C# Junior Developer Level Interview Questions

The questions in this guide are broken down into three categories: Junior Developer, Mid-level Developer, and Expert. You should use the Junior Developer C# programming interview questions in this section if you‘re looking for a junior or entry-level developer with less experience.

Skip to the Mid-level Developer or Senior Developer sections for C# interview questions for experienced developers

Skill Requirements for Junior C# Developers

• Basic programming skills;
• Object-oriented programming;
• Foundational C#/.NET knowledge;
• Understanding of ASP.net, SQL, LINQ, and other important technologies. ;
• Learning on the job;
• Following instructions and receiving feedback;
• Thinking like a programmer.

Example C# Junior Developer Interview Questions and Answers

Question 1: What are an Object and a Class?

Answer: A Class is an encapsulation of properties and methods that are used to represent a real-time entity. A class object is a data structure that brings all the instances together in a single unit.

A class definition can be created in multiple files, but it will be compiled as one class at run time and all the methods from all source files are accessed with the same object. The class in C# inherits from the System Object Type (System.Object).

An Object in an instance of a Class. Technically, an object class is just a block of memory allocated that can be stored in the form of Variables, an Array, or a Collection.

Question 2: What are the fundamental OOP concepts?

Answer: The four fundamental concepts of Object-Oriented Programming are:

• Encapsulation – The Internal representation of an object is hidden from the view outside the object‘s definition. Only the required information can be accessed, whereas the rest of the data implementation is hidden.
• Abstraction – It is a process of identifying the critical behavior and data of an object and eliminating irrelevant details.
• Inheritance – It is the ability to create new classes from another class. It is done by accessing, modifying, and extending the behavior of objects in the parent class. C# does not support multiple inheritance.
• Polymorphism – The name means, one name, many forms. It is achieved by having multiple methods with the same name but different implementations.

Question 3: What are Managed and Unmanaged codes?

Answer: Managed code is code that is executed by the CLR (Common Language Runtime) i.e all application code based on the .Net Platform. It is considered managed because of the .Net framework which internally uses the garbage collector to clear up unused memory.

Unmanaged code is any code that is executed by the application runtime of any other framework apart from .Net. The application runtime will take care of memory, security, and other performance operations.

Question 4: What is an Interface?

Answer: An Interface is a class with no implementation. It is an abstract class with only public abstract methods. The only thing that an interface class contains is the declaration of methods, properties, and events, not the definition.

Question 5: What are the different types of classes in C#?

Answer: The different types of classes in C# are:

• Partial class – Allows its members to be divided or shared with multiple .cs files. It is denoted by the keyword Partial.
• Sealed class – It is a class that cannot be inherited. To access the class member of sealed classes, we need to create the object of sealed classes. It is denoted by the keyword Sealed.
• Abstract class – It is a class whose object cannot be instantiated. The class can only be inherited. It should contain at least one method. It is denoted by the keyword abstract. An abstract class can have abstract and concrete methods.
• Static class – It is a class that does not allow inheritance. It is denoted by the keyword static. This keyword tells the compiler to check for any accidental instances of the static class. The class members are also static, such as a member static method.

Question 6: Explain Code compilation in C#.

Answer: There are four steps in code compilation, which include:

• Compiling the source code into Managed code by C# compiler.
• Combining the newly created code into assemblies.
• Loading the Common Language Runtime(CLR).
• Executing the assembly by CLR.

Question 7: What are the differences between a Class and a Struct?

Answer: Given below are the differences between a Class and a Struct:

Class	Struct
Supports Inheritance	Does not support Inheritance
Class is pass by reference (reference types)	Struct is pass by copy (Value type)
Members are private by default	Members are public by default
Good for larger complex objects	Good for small isolated models
Can use waste collector for memory management	Cannot use garbage collector for garbage collection and hence no Memory management

Question 8: What is the difference between the Virtual method and the Abstract method?

Answer: A Virtual method must always have a default implementation. However, it can be overridden in the derived class, though not mandatory. It can be overridden using the override keyword.

An Abstract method does not have an implementation. Abstract methods reside in the abstract class. The derived class must implement the abstract methods. An override keyword is not necessary here though it can be used.

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Question 9: Explain Namespaces in C#.

Answer: They are used to organize large code projects. The class names declared in one namespace do not conflict with the same class names in another. “System” is the most widely used namespace in C#. We can create our own namespace and use one namespace in another, which are called Nested Namespaces.

They are denoted by the keyword “namespace”.

Question 10: What is the “using” statement in C#?

Answer: “Using” Keyword denotes that the particular namespace is being used by the program.

For Example, using System. Here System is a namespace. The class Console is defined under System. So we can use the console.writeline (“….”) or readline in our program.

Question 11: Explain Abstraction.

Answer: Abstraction is one of the OOP concepts. It is used to display only the essential features of the class and hides unnecessary information.

Let us take an Example of a Car:

A driver of the car should know the details about the Car such as color, name, mirror, steering, gear, brake, etc. What he doesn‘t have to know is an Internal engine, Exhaust system.

So, Abstraction helps in knowing what is necessary and hiding the internal details from the outside world. Hiding of the internal information can be achieved by declaring such parameters as Private using the private keyword.

Question 12: Explain Polymorphism.

Answer: Programmatically, Polymorphism means the same method but different implementations.

It is of 2 types, Compile-time or early binding and Runtime or late binding.

Compile-time polymorphism is achieved by operator overloading.

Runtime polymorphism is achieved by method overriding. Method overriding changes the method definition in the derived class to change the method behavior. Inheritance and Virtual functions are used during Runtime Polymorphism.

For Example, If a class has a method Void Add(), polymorphism is achieved by Overloading the method, that is, void Add(int a, int b), and void Add(int add) are all overloaded methods.

Question 13: How is Exception Handling implemented in C#?

Answer: Exception handling is done using four keywords in C#:

• try – contains a block of code for which an exception will be checked.
• catch – It is a program that catches an exception with the help of an exception handler. Multiple catch blocks are executed with a try statement.
• finally – It is a block of code written to execute regardless of whether an exception is caught or not.
• Throw – Throws an exception when a problem occurs.

Question 14: What are C# I/O Classes? What are the commonly used I/O Classes?

Answer: C# has a System.IO namespace, consisting of classes that are used to perform various operations on files like creating, deleting, opening, closing, etc.

Some commonly used I/O classes are:

• File – Helps in manipulating a file.
• StreamWriter – Used for writing characters to a stream.
• StreamReader – Used for reading characters to a stream.
• StringWriter – Used for reading a string buffer.
• StringReader – Used for writing a string buffer.
• Path – Used for performing operations related to the path information.

Question 15: What is StreamReader/StreamWriter class?

Answer: StreamReader and StreamWriter are classes of namespace System.IO. They are used when we want to read or write charact90, Reader-based data, respectively.

Some of the members of StreamReader are Close(), Read(), and Readline().

Members of StreamWriter are: Close(), Write(), Writeline().

Class Program1
{
  using(StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(“C:\ReadMe.txt”)
  {
    //----------------code to read-------------------//
  }
  using(StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(“C:\ReadMe.txt”))
  {
    //-------------code to write-------------------//
  }
}

Question 16: What is a Destructor in C#?

Answer: A Destructor is used to clean up the memory and free the resources. But in C# this is done by the garbage collector on its own. System. GC.Collect() is called internally for cleaning up. But sometimes it may be necessary to implement destructors manually.

For Example:

~Car()
{
  Console.writeline(“....”);
}

Question 17: What is an Abstract Class?

Answer: An Abstract class is a class that is denoted by an abstract keyword and can be used only as a Base class. Abstract classes should always be inherited. An instance of the class itself cannot be created. If we do not want any program to create an object of a class, then such classes can be made abstract.

Any method in the abstract classes does not have implementations in the same class. But they must be implemented in the child class or derived class object.

For Example:

abstract class AB1
{
  Public void Add();
}
Class childClass : AB1
{
  childClass cs = new childClass ();
  int Sum = cs.Add();
}

All the methods in an abstract class are implicitly virtual methods. Hence virtual keywords should not be used with any methods in the abstract class.

Question 18: What is the difference between static and void?

Answer:

Static-declared variables are globally accessible without creating an instance of the class. Void is a type modifier that specifies that the method doesn’t return any value.

Question 19: What is an object pool in .Net?

Answer:

It is a container of ready-to-use objects and reduces the overhead of creating a new object.

Question 20: What is the accessibility modifier Protected Internal?

Answer:

Protected Internal variables/methods are accessible within the same assembly and also from the classes that are derived from this parent class.

Question 21: Can a private virtual method be overridden?

Answer:

No, a private virtual method cannot be overridden because they are not accessible outside the class.

C# Mid-level Developer Interview Questions

Most C# developers in the world can be classed as mid-level. They are developers that have great knowledge and experience building C# applications but aren‘t yet truly experts.

Use the following C# coding interview questions to find developers with the experience to build many types of apps and to perform most programming tasks without much supervision.

Example Skill Requirements for Mid-level C# Developers

• Data Structures;
• Object-Oriented design patterns;
• Advanced String operations;
• Regular expressions;
• Indexers (also called smart arrays);
• Types of constructors, like default constructor, parameterized constructor, etc.;
• Constructor chaining that maps parent class constructor implicitly to every child class constructor;
• C# Events and Delegates;
• Debugging applications.

Example C# Mid-level Developer Interview Questions and Answers

Question 22: What are Boxing and Unboxing?

Answer: Converting a value type to a reference type is called Boxing.

For Example:

int Value1 -= 10;
//------Boxing------//
object boxedValue = Value1;

Explicit conversion of the same reference types (created by boxing) back to value types is called Unboxing. Value-type variables can be assigned values directly.

For Example:

//------UnBoxing------//
int UnBoxing = int (boxedValue);

Question 23: What is the difference between Continue and Break Statement?

Answer: The break statement breaks the loop. It makes the control of the program exit the loop. The continue statement makes the control of the program exit only the current iteration. It does not break the loop.

Question 24: What is the difference between the Finally and finalize blocks?

Answer: finally block is called after the execution of the try and catch block. It is used for exception handling. Regardless of whether an exception is caught or not, this block of code will be executed. Usually, this block will have a clean-up code.

finalize method is called just before garbage collection. It is used to perform clean-up operations of unmanaged code. It is automatically called when a given instance is not subsequently called.

Questions on Arrays and Strings

Question 25: What is an Array? Give the syntax for a single and multi-dimensional array object.

Answer: An Array is used to store multiple variables of the same type. It is a collection of variables stored in a contiguous memory location.

For Example:

double numbers = new double[10];
int[] score = new int[4] {25,24,23,25};

A Single dimensional array is a linear array where the variables are stored in a single row. The above example is a Single dimensional array.

Arrays can have more than one dimension. Multidimensional arrays are also called rectangular arrays.

For Example:

int[,] numbers = new int[3,2] { {1,2}, {2,3}, {3,4} };

Question 26: What is a Jagged Array?

Answer: A Jagged array is an array whose elements are arrays. It is also called an array of arrays. It can be either single or multiple dimensions.

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int[] jaggedArray = new int[4][];

Question 27: Name some properties of Array.

Answer: Properties of an Array include:

• Length – Gets the total number of all the elements in an array.
• IsFixedSize – This tells whether the array is fixed in size or not.
• IsReadOnly – Tells whether the array is read-only or not.

Question 28: What is an Array Class?

Answer: An Array class is the base class to derive all the classes for arrays. It provides many properties and methods. It is present in the namespace System.

Question 29: What is a String object? What are the properties of a String Class?

Answer: A String is a collection of char objects. We can also declare string variables in c#.

string name = “C# Questions”;

A string class in C# represents a string.

The properties of the String class are Chars and Length.
Chars get the Char object in the current String.
Length gets the number of objects in the current String.

Question 30: What is an Escape Sequence? Name some String escape sequences in C#.

Answer: An Escape sequence is denoted by a backslash (\). The backslash indicates that the character that follows it should be interpreted literally or it is a special character. An escape sequence is considered as a single character.

String escape sequences are as follows:

• \n – Newline character
• \b – Backspace
• \\ – Backslash
• \‘ – Single quote
• \‘‘ – Double Quote

Question 31: What are Regular expressions? Search a string using regular expressions.

Answer: Regular expression is a template to match a set of inputs. The pattern can consist of operators, constructs, or character literals. Regex is used for string parsing and replacing the character string.

For Example:

* matches the preceding character zero or more times. So, a*b regex is equivalent to b, ab, aab, aaab, and so on.

Searching a string using Regex:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
  string[] languages = { "C#", "Python", "Java" };
  foreach(string s in languages)
  {
    if(System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.IsMatch(s,"Python"))
    {
      Console.WriteLine("Match found");
    }
  }
}

The above example searches for “Python” against the set of inputs from the languages array. It uses Regex.IsMatch which returns true in case the pattern is found in the input. The pattern can be any regular expression representing the input that we want to match.

Question 32: What are the basic String Operations? Explain.

Answer: Some of the basic string operations are:

• Concatenate – Two strings can be concatenated either by using System.String.Concat or by using the + operator.
• Modify – Replace(a,b) is used to replace a string with another string. Trim() is used to trim the string at the end or the beginning.
• Compare – System.StringComparison() is used to compare two strings, either a case-sensitive comparison or not case-sensitive. Mainly takes two parameters, the original string, and the string to be compared.
• Search – StartWith and EndsWith methods are used to search a particular string.

Question 33: What is Parsing? How to Parse a Date Time String?

Answer: Parsing is converting a string into another data type.

For Example:

string text = “500”;
int num = int.Parse(text);

500 is an integer. So, the Parse method converts the string 500 into its own base type, i.e int.

Follow the same method to convert a DateTime string.

string dateTime = “Jan 1, 2018”;
DateTime parsedValue = DateTime.Parse(dateTime);

Question 34: How to return multiple values from a function in C#?

Answer: 

You can use ref/out parameters to return more than one value from a function compared to a return statement that returns only a single value. Output parameters return two values from a function.

C# Senior Developer Interview Questions

This section contains some more technical interview questions and answers for experienced C# developers. Use these to test if your candidates can design and build quality applications using C#.

Skill Requirements for Senior C# Developers

• Expert C# and .NET knowledge;
• Data structures and Object Oriented design patterns (e.g., singleton design pattern where a class can have only one instance);
• Designing for specific requirements (e.g. security, scalability);
• Maintaining and upgrading applications;
• DevOps, continuous delivery;
• Efficient programming and clean code;
• Asynchronous programming;
• Debugging;
• Testing;
• Leadership skills;
• Clear communication skills.

Example C# Advanced Interview Questions and Answers

Question 35: What is a Delegate? Explain.

Answer: A Delegate is a variable that holds the reference to a method. Hence delegates are function pointers of reference type. All Delegates are derived from System.Delegate namespace. Both Delegate and the method that it refers to can have the same signature.

Declaring a delegate:

public delegate void AddNumbers(int n);

After the declaration of a delegate, the object must be created of the delegate using the new keyword.

AddNumbers an1 = new AddNumbers(number);

The delegate provides a kind of encapsulation to the reference method, which will internally get called when a delegate is called.

public delegate int myDel(int number);
public class Program
{
  public int AddNumbers(int a)
  {
    int Sum = a + 10;
    return Sum;
  }
  public void Start()
  {
    myDel DelgateExample = AddNumbers;
  }
}

In the above example, we have a delegate myDel which takes an integer value as a parameter. Class Program has a method of the same signature as the delegate, called AddNumbers().

If there is another method called Start() which creates an object of the delegate, then the object can be assigned to AddNumbers as it has the same signature as that of the delegate.

Question 35: What are Events?

Answer: Events are user actions that generate notifications to the application to which it must respond. The user actions can be mouse movements, keypress, and so on.

Programmatically, a class that raises an event is called a publisher, and a class that responds and receives the event is called a subscriber. An Event should have at least one subscriber else that event is never raised.

Delegates are used to declare Events.

Public delegate void PrintNumbers();
Event PrintNumbers myEvent;

Question 36: How to use Delegates with Events?

Answer: Delegates are used to raise events and handle them. Always a delegate needs to be declared first and then the Events are declared.

Let us see an Example:

Consider a class called Patient. Consider two other classes, Insurance, and Bank which require the Death information of the Patient from the patient class. Here, Insurance and Bank are the subscribers and the Patient class becomes the Publisher. It triggers the death event and the other two classes should receive the event.

namespace ConsoleApp2
{
  public class Patient
  {
    public delegate void deathInfo(); //Declaring a Delegate//
    public event deathInfo deathDate; //Declaring the event//
    public void Death()
    {
      deathDate();
    }
  }
  public class Insurance
  {
    Patient myPat = new Patient();
    void GetDeathDetails()
    {
      //-------Do Something with the deathDate event------------//
    }
    void Main()
    {
      //--------Subscribe the function GetDeathDetails----------//
      myPat.deathDate += GetDeathDetails;
    }
  }
  public class Bank
  {
    Patient myPat = new Patient();
    void GetPatInfo()
    {
      //-------Do Something with the deathDate event------------//
    }
    void Main()
    {
      //--------Subscribe the function GetPatInfo ----------//
      myPat.deathDate += GetPatInfo;
    }
  }
}

Question 37: What are the different types of Delegates?

Answer: The Different types of Delegates are:

Single Delegate – A delegate which can call a single method.

Multicast Delegate – A delegate which can call multiple methods. + and – operators are used to subscribe and unsubscribe respectively.

Generic Delegate – It does not require an instance of the delegate to be defined. It is of three types, Action, Funcs, and Predicate.

• Action – In the above example of delegates and events, we can replace the definition of delegate and event using the Action keyword. The Action delegate defines a method that can be called on arguments but does not return a result

Public delegate void deathInfo();
Public event deathInfo deathDate;
//Replacing with Action//
Public event Action deathDate;

Action implicitly refers to a delegate.

• Func – A Func delegate defines a method that can be called on arguments and returns a result.

Func <int, string, bool> myDel is same as delegate bool myDel(int a, string b);

• Predicate – Defines a method that can be called on arguments and always returns the bool.

Predicate<string> myDel is same as delegate bool myDel(string s);

Question 38: What do Multicast Delegates mean?

Answer: A Delegate that points to more than one method is called a Multicast Delegate. Multicasting is achieved by using the + and += operators.

Consider the Example from question 32.

There are two subscribers for deathEvent, GetPatInfo, and GetDeathDetails. And hence we have used the += operator. It means whenever the myDel is called, both the subscribers get called. The delegates will be called in the order in which they are added.

Question 39: Explain Publishers and Subscribers in Events.

Answer: A Publisher is a class responsible for publishing a message of different types of other classes. The message is nothing but an Event as discussed in the above questions.

From the Example in Question 32, Class Patient is the Publisher class. It is generating an Event deathEvent, which the other classes receive.

Subscribers capture the message of the type that it is interested in. Again, from the Example of Question 32, Class Insurance and Bank are Subscribers. They are interested in event deathEvent of type void.

Question 40: What are Synchronous and Asynchronous operations?

Answer: Synchronization is a way to create a thread-safe code where only one thread can access the resource at any given time.

An asynchronous call waits for the method to complete before continuing with the program flow. Synchronous programming badly affects the UI operations, when the user tries to perform time-consuming operations since only one thread will be used.

In Asynchronous operation, the method call will immediately return so that the program can perform other operations while the called method completes its work in certain situations.

In C#, Async and Await keywords are used to achieve asynchronous programming. Look at Question 43 for more details on synchronous programming.

Question 41: What is Reflection in C#?

Answer: Reflection is the ability of code to access the metadata of the assembly during runtime. A program reflects upon itself and uses the metadata to inform the user or modify its behavior. Metadata refers to information about objects and methods.

The namespace System.Reflection contains methods and classes that manage the information of all the loaded types and methods. It is mainly used for windows applications, for example, to view the properties of a button in a windows form.

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The MemberInfo object of the class reflection is used to discover the attributes associated with a class.

Reflection is implemented in two steps, first, we get the type of the object, and then we use the type to identify members such as methods and properties.

To get the type of class, we can simply use

Type mytype = myClass.GetType();

Once we have a type of class, the other information about the class can be easily accessed.

System.Reflection.MemberInfo Info = mytype.GetMethod(“AddNumbers”);

The above statement tries to find a method with the name AddNumbers in the class myClass.

Question 42: What is a Generic Class?

Answer: Generics or Generic class is used to create classes or objects which do not have any specific data type. Data types can be assigned during runtime, i.e when it is used in the program. Collection classes can also be created using generics. They increase type safety.

For Example:

class Program
{
  0 references
  public void Compare(int a, int b)
  {

  }
  0 references
  public void Compare(string a, string b)
  {

  }
  4 references
  class CompareGenericClass<T>
  {
    2 references
    public void Compare(T x, T y)
    {
         
    }
  }
  0 references
  static void Main(string[] args)
  {
    CompareGenericClass<string> stringCompare = new CompareGenericClass<string>();
    stringCompare.Compare("", "");

    CompareGenericClass<int> intCompare = new CompareGenericClass<int>();
    intCompare.Compare(2, 3);
  }
}

So, from the above code, we see 2 compare methods initially, to compare string and int.

In the case of other data type parameter comparisons, instead of creating many overloaded methods, we can create a generic class and pass a substitute data type, i.e T. So, T acts as a datatype until it is used specifically in the Main() method.

Question 43: Explain Get and Set Accessor properties.

Answer: Get and Set are called Accessors. These are made use by Properties. The property provides a mechanism to read and write the value of a private field. For accessing that private field, these accessors are used.

Get Property is used to return the value of a property
Set Property accessor is used to set the value.

The usage of get and set is as below:

namespace ConsoleApp1
{
  2 references
  class Program
  {
    int number;
    2 references
    public int Number
    {
      get
      {
        return this.number;
      }
      set
      {
        this.number = value;
      }
    }
          
    0 references
    class New
    {
      0 references
      static void Main()
      {
        Program myprgm = new Program();
        myprgm.Number = 10;
        Console.WriteLine(myprgm.Number);
      }
    }
  }
}

Question 44: What is a Thread? What is Multithreading?

Answer: A Thread is a set of instructions that can be executed, which will enable our program to perform concurrent processing. Concurrent processing helps us do more than one operation at a time. By default, C# has only one thread. But the other threads can be created to execute the code in parallel with the original thread.

Thread has a life cycle. It starts whenever a thread class is created and is terminated after the execution. System.Threading is the namespace that needs to be included to create threads and use its members.

Threads are created by extending the Thread Class. Start() method is used to begin thread execution.

//CallThread is the target method//
ThreadStart methodThread = new ThreadStart(CallThread);
Thread childThread = new Thread(methodThread);
childThread.Start();

C# can execute more than one task at a time. This is done by handling different processes by different threads. This is called MultiThreading.

There are several thread methods that are used to handle the multi-threaded operations:

Start, Sleep, Abort, Suspend, Resume and Join are used to handle multiple threads.

Most of these methods are self-explanatory.

Question 45: Name some properties of Thread Class.

Answer: Few Properties of the thread class are:

• IsAlive – contains the value True when a thread is Active.
• Name – Can return the name of the thread. Also, can set a name for the thread.
• Priority – returns the prioritized value of the task set by the operating system.
• IsBackground – gets or sets a value that indicates whether a thread should be a background process or foreground.
• ThreadState – describes the thread state.

Question 46: What are the different states of a Thread?

Answer: Different states of a thread are:

• Unstarted – Thread is created.
• Running – Thread starts execution.
• WaitSleepJoin – Thread calls sleep, calls wait on another object and calls join on another thread.
• Suspended – The thread has been suspended.
• Aborted – Thread is dead but not changed to state stopped.
• Stopped – The thread has stopped.

Question 47: What are Async and Await?

Answer: Async and Await keywords are used to create asynchronous methods in C.

Asynchronous programming means that the process runs independently of the main or other processes.

Usage of Async and Await is as shown below:

public async Task<int> CalculateCount()
{
  //Write Code to calculate Count of characters in a file//

  await Task.Delay(1000);
  return 1;
}

public async Task myMethod()
{
  Task<int> count = CalculateCount();
  int result = await count;
}

• The Async keyword is used for the method declaration.
• The count is of a task of type int which calls the method CalculateCount().
• Calculatecount() starts execution and calculates something.
• Independent work is done on my thread and then an await count statement is reached.
• If the Calculatecount is not finished, myMethod will return to its calling method, thus the main thread doesn‘t get blocked.
• If the Calculatecount is already finished, then we have the result available when the control reaches await count. So the next step will continue in the same thread. However, it is not the situation in the above case where a Delay of 1 second is involved.

Question 48: What is a Deadlock?

Answer: A Deadlock is a situation where a process is not able to complete its execution because two or more processes are waiting for each other to finish. This usually occurs in multi-threading.

Here a Shared resource is being held by a process and another process is waiting for the first process to release it and the thread holding the locked item is waiting for another process to complete.

Consider the below Example:

private static ibject ObjA = new object()
private static ibject ObjB = new object()

private static void PerformtaskA()
{
  //-----------------some code------------//

  //Try to access ObjB//
  lock(ObjB)
  {
    Thread.Sleep(1000);
    lock(ObjA)
    {
      //-----------------some code------------//
    }
  }
}

private static void PerformtaskB()
{
  //-----------------some code------------//

  lock(ObjA)
  {
    lock(ObjB)
    {
      //-----------------some code------------//
    }
  }
}

public static void Main()
{
  Thread thread1 = new Thread(PerformaskA);
  Thread thread2 = new Thread(PerformaskB);

  thread1.Start(); thread2.Start();
}

• Perform tasks accesses objB and waits for 1 second.
• Meanwhile, PerformtaskB tries to access ObjA.
• After 1 second, PeformtaskA tries to access ObjA which is locked by PerformtaskB.
• PerformtaskB tries to access ObjB which is locked by PerformtaskA.

This creates a Deadlock.

Question 49: Explain Lock, Monitors, and Mutex Objects in Threading.

Answer: Lock keyword ensures that only one thread can enter a particular section of the code at any given time. In the above example, lock(ObjA) means the lock is placed on ObjA until this process releases it, no other thread can access ObjA.

A Mutex is also like a lock but it can work across multiple processes at a time. WaitOne() is used to lock and ReleaseMutex() is used to release the lock. But Mutex is slower than lock as it takes time to acquire and release it.

Monitor.Enter and Monitor.Exit implements lock internally. a lock is a shortcut for Monitors. lock(objA) internally calls.

Monitor.Enter(ObjA);
try
{
}
Finally {Monitor.Exit(ObjA));}

Question 50: What is a Race Condition?

Answer: A Race condition occurs when two threads access the same resource and are trying to change it at the same time. The thread which will be able to access the resource first cannot be predicted.

If we have two threads, T1 and T2, and they are trying to access a shared resource called X. And if both the threads try to write a value to X, the last value written to X will be saved.

Question 51: What is Thread Pooling?

Answer: A Thread pool is a collection of threads. These threads can be used to perform tasks without disturbing the primary thread. Once the thread completes the task, the thread returns to the pool.

System.Threading.ThreadPool namespace has classes that manage the threads in the pool and its operations.

System.Threading.ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new System.Threading.WaitCallback(SomeTask));

The above line queues a task. SomeTask methods should have a parameter of type Object.

Question 52: What is Serialization?

Answer: Serialization is a process of converting code to its binary format. Once it is converted to bytes, it can be easily stored and written to a disk or any such storage device. Serializations are mainly useful when we do not want to lose the original form of the code and it can be retrieved anytime in the future.

Any class which is marked with the attribute [Serializable] will be converted to its binary form.

The reverse process of getting the c# code back from the binary form is called Deserialization.

To Serialize an object we need the object to be serialized, a stream that can contain the serialized object, and a namespace System.Runtime.Serialization that contains classes for serialization.

Question 53: What are the types of Serialization?

Answer: The different types of Serialization are: XML serialization, SOAP, and Binary.

• XML serialization – It serializes all the public properties to the XML document. Since the data is in XML format, it can be easily read and manipulated in various formats. The classes reside in System.sml.Serialization.
• SOAP – Classes reside in System.Runtime.Serialization. Similar to XML but produces a complete SOAP-compliant envelope that can be used by any system that understands SOAP.
• Binary Serialization – Allows any code to be converted to its binary form. Can serialize and restore public and non-public properties. It is faster and occupies less space.

Question 54: What is an XSD file?

Answer: An XSD file stands for XML Schema Definition. It gives a structure for the XML file. It means it decides the elements that the XML should have and in what order and what properties should be present. Without an XSD file associated with XML, the XML can have any tags, attributes, and elements.

Xsd.exe tool converts the files to XSD format. During the Serialization of C# code, the classes are converted to XSD-compliant format by xsd.exe.

In Summary

Your ability to identify and hire the best C# developers will ultimately determine the success of your project. Just keep in mind, C# is an incredibly diverse language, and you probably don‘t need the perfect C# developer to get your job done right.

Use these sample and typical interview questions on C# to pick out the candidate with exactly the right skill set to get your project done right, and within your budget.

Our article here discusses the development of an MVC web app using C#.

You can source other questions to test knowledge of type variables, access modifiers, data members, return type, method overloading, nullable types with either a normal or null value, and any other skill sets that might be relevant online or simply by contacting DevTeam.Space to help you.

If you are looking to hire a remote team of developers given the added benefits it offers for your software development project, we would advise you to read our article on how to hire and manage a remote developer.

Happy Hiring!