Saturday, October 8, 2011

1. First contact with C#

C# is a computer programming language. It is a modern language, evolved from C and C++, and its syntax is very similar to Java's. The programs created with C# might not run as fast as those created with C, but the programmer's productivity is much higher.

C# is a language created by Microsoft, in order to allow software development for their .NET platform, and was later standardized by ECMA and ISO. Also there is an alternative "open source" implementation of C#, called the "Mono Project" which is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and other operating systems.

We'll start begin by using Mono as a development platform for our first examples. When we know the basics, we will move to Microsoft Visual C#, which requires a more powerful computer but includes a very advanced development environment, and has a free version available (Visual Studio Express Edition).

The steps we will follow to create a program in C# are:

1. Write the C# program (source file), with any text editor.
2. Compile it with our compiler. This will produce an "executable file".
3. Run the executable file.

Most modern compilers allow us take those steps from a single environment in which we write our programs, compile them, and debug them in case they don't work properly.

In the next section we will see an example of one of these environments, where to find it and how to install it.

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