C# Tutorial - Introduction
Contents
Introduction
I get a lot of people with very little to no experience programming wondering where to start. I feel like C# is a great language for a beginner. The .NET Framework is a great support for someone who has never written any code before. Also, it is the language I started out with which makes it easy for me to discuss from that perspective. I was going to start with a brief introduction to the .NET Framework, but I already covered what it is and it's relationship to C# in a previous post. If you are interested in a more comprehensive history of C# and the .NET Framework then head on over to wikipedia. If you just want to get coding (and I know you do) then keep reading.
C# as a topic is so vast and far reaching that I could not possibly hope to cover it all in a single tutorial, not even broken up into parts. For this I will just focus on the basics. We will cover the C# syntax, some of the commonly used libraries, and how to start your first application.
At the time of this writing the current version of the .NET Framework is 4.0. The version of the framework you are using can make a difference in the code you write. .NET Framework 3.5 and earlier use a completely different compiler than 4.0. There aren't as many differences from 2.0 to 3.5, but 3.5 to 4.0 brings a lot of changes to the table. For this tutorial I will assume you are using .NET 4 and at least Visual Studio 2010 Express (free). Though my screen shots and instructions will be in Visual Studio 2010 Professional, you should be able to figure out the minor discrepancies if you are using the express edition.
If you have your IDE (Visual Studio) installed already then I bet you are chomping at the bit to tap out some code. Well let's get to it.