Stack vs heap mental model in C Sharp (C#) - Hands-On Comparison

Stack vs Heap Mental Model in C#

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are organizing your workspace. You have a small desk drawer for quick notes (stack) and a big filing cabinet for important documents (heap). You want to understand how C# stores simple data and objects in these two places.

🎯 Goal: You will create a simple C# program that shows how value types (stored on the stack) and reference types (stored on the heap) behave differently. You will see how changing one variable affects another depending on where the data is stored.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a value type variable and assign it a number

Create a reference type variable (class instance) with a number property

Copy the value type variable to another variable

Copy the reference type variable to another variable

Change the copied variables and observe the effect on the originals

Print the results to show the difference between stack and heap behavior

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Understanding stack and heap helps you write efficient programs and avoid bugs related to data changes.

💼 Career

Many programming jobs require knowledge of memory management and how data is stored and accessed.

1

Create a value type variable

Create an int variable called stackNumber and set it to 10.

C Sharp (C#)

# Create an int variable called stackNumber and set it to 10
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use int stackNumber = 10; to create the variable.

2

Create a reference type variable

Create a class called HeapNumber with a public int property called Value. Then create an instance called heapNumber and set its Value to 10.

C Sharp (C#)

int stackNumber = 10;
// Create class HeapNumber with public int Value property
// Create instance heapNumber and set Value to 10
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Define the class with a public property, then create an object and set its property.

3

Copy variables and change copies

Create a new int variable called stackCopy and set it equal to stackNumber. Create a new HeapNumber variable called heapCopy and set it equal to heapNumber. Then change stackCopy to 20 and heapCopy.Value to 20.

C Sharp (C#)

int stackNumber = 10;

class HeapNumber
{
    public int Value { get; set; }
}

HeapNumber heapNumber = new HeapNumber();
heapNumber.Value = 10;

// Copy stackNumber to stackCopy
// Copy heapNumber to heapCopy
// Change stackCopy to 20
// Change heapCopy.Value to 20
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the variables and then change the copies as instructed.

4

Print the results

Print the values of stackNumber, stackCopy, heapNumber.Value, and heapCopy.Value using Console.WriteLine to show how stack and heap behave differently.

C Sharp (C#)

int stackNumber = 10;

class HeapNumber
{
    public int Value { get; set; }
}

HeapNumber heapNumber = new HeapNumber();
heapNumber.Value = 10;

int stackCopy = stackNumber;
HeapNumber heapCopy = heapNumber;

stackCopy = 20;
heapCopy.Value = 20;

// Print stackNumber, stackCopy, heapNumber.Value, heapCopy.Value
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Console.WriteLine with string interpolation to print the variable values.