Using: How to Create a Program in C Sharp

This updated guide examines Using: How to Create a Program in C Sharp and organizes the essential facts, background, and practical takeaways in clear American English.

Part 1

Seting Up (Windows)

1. Gohereto download your free copy of Visual C# Community Edition.
2. Run the downloaded executable and follow these steps:
   • Next.
   • I agree ? Next.
   • Select MSDN, not SQL ? Next.
   • Install.

Part 2

Creating Your First Program

1. Run Visual C# Community Edition.
2. Go to File ? New ? Project.
3. Select Visual C# ? Windows ? Console Application.
4. Press OK. You should see this:

   usingSystem;usingSystem. Collections. Generic;usingSystem. Text;namespaceConsoleApplication1{classProgram{staticvoidMain(string[]args){}}}

5. Beneathstatic void Main(string[] args), after the first curly brace, type:

   Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");Console.ReadLine();

6. Make sure it looks like this:

   usingSystem;usingSystem. Collections. Generic;usingSystem. Text;namespaceConsoleApplication1{classProgram{staticvoidMain(string[]args){Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");Console.ReadLine();}}}

7. Click the Run [?] button on the toolbar. This will build the program and run the program. Congratulations!
8. View the result. This should have produced a console window, reading Hello World!
   • If it did not, then you did something incorrectly.

Part 3

Setting Up (Free Software)

1. Download CVS and GNU build tools. This should be included into the majority of Linux distributions.
2. Go to the DotGNU project (http://www.gnu.org/software/dotgnu/) that provides FOSS implementation of C#. Read the chapter about the installation. These instructions are simple to follow even for beginners.
3. Decide if you want to get the source code and build you C# environment from scratch or you may try pre-compiled distributions first. The project is relatively easy to build from the source so we suggest to try this way first.
4. Try to start some examples that also come in precompiled (.exe) form. For instance, FormsTest.exe will show large collection of various GUI controls. The folder pnetlib/samples contains the script ilrun.sh that can launch precompiled executables, for instance sh./ilrun.sh forms/FormsTest.exe (from inside that folder).
5. Use KWrite or gedit to edit the C# code - the recent versions of both editors support the syntax highlight for this language.
6. Figure out yourself how to compile the short example, given in the "Windows way" section. If the project web site does not provided enough documentation, try web search. If this does not help, post questions to the project mailing lists.
7. Congratulations, you are both C# - aware and not bound to any single C# provider!