Getting Started With C# .Net

If you have Visual Studio Community 2019 or above, click here to jump
to your section for creating a new project (or just scroll down a bit):

2015 to 2017 Users

When you first start Visual Studio Community 2015 and 2017, you’ll
see a screen like this one:

This lets you select the colour scheme for the software. We’ve gone
for Light, in the screenshot above. Click the Start Visual Studio button
at the bottom and you’ll see this screen appear:

Or this, for the 2017 edition:

There’s a lot happening on the start page. But basically, this is where you
can start a new project, or open an existing one. At the moment, the
area bottom-left labelled Recent is blank.

When you create a project, the name you give it will be displayed here,
as a hyperlink. Clicking the link will open the project.

On the left-hand side of the start screen, there are two links: “New
Project” and “Open Project”. To get started, click the
New Project link. For Community 20017 users, you won’t see the links.
Instead, click File > New > Project.

Creating a new project will bring up a dialogue box:

Click on Templates from the list on the left. Under Templates,
click on Visual C#. You’ll then see Console Application appear
in the middle. (Community 2015 users will see more items in the middle;
2017 users will see a Console App item.)

The New Project dialogue box is where you select the type of project
you want to create. If you have a version of Visual Studio Express prior
to Community 2017, your options are limited. For the rest of this course,
we’ll be creating Windows Applications. For now, select Console Application
or Console App. Then click OK.

When you click OK, a new Console Application project will be created
for you. Some code should be displayed. You can now skip the next section
and pick up with the heading All Users.

Visual Studio Community 2019

Once everything is downloaded and installed, you’re ready to start
a new project. You should see this:

Any projects you create will appear on the left, under Open recent,
and you can simply click on your file to open it. Click on Create a
new project, the fourth box on the right in the image above.

On the Create a new project dialogue box. You’ll see this screen:

The one selected, Console App, is the one you want. But if it’s not
selected, click the dropdown box at the top, for Languages. Then choose
the C# option:

There is another template for Console Apps. The second one is specific
to Windows. You can use that one, if you prefer. The screenshot below
shows it selected:

Click Next, though, to go to a new screen:

You can leave it on the default project name of ConsoleApp1.

You can choose a location to save your projects. We recommend creating
a folder called Visual Studio 2019 to save all your work. Inside of
the Visual Studio 2019 folder, create one called Projects. This will
model the save location of previous versions of the software. Click
the grey button to the right of the location box to do this.

The solution name takes the same name as the project name, but it can
be different, if you prefer. But click the Create button to create your
new project.

All Users

You should now be looking at a screen that looks something like this
(screenshot from the 2019 version of the software:

What we’re going to do first is to create a very simple program, so
that you can see what makes up a C# .NET project. By the end of this
chapter, you’ll have learnt the following:

• How to create new projects
• What the Solution Explorer is
• The various files that make up of a C# .NET project
• How to save your work
• How to run programs
• The importance of the Main statement

The simple program we’ll create is called a Console Application. We won’t
be doing much else with this type of application, as this is a course
about Windows Applications. Off we go then!

A Simple C# Console Application

A Console Application is one that looks like a DOS window. If you don’t know
what these are, click your Start menu in the bottom left of your screen. In
Vista and Windows 7, type cmd in the search box at the bottom of the start menu.
In Windows 8 and 10, the search box is on the Start Screen page. You’ll then
see the search results appear:

Click Command Prompt to see the console appear.

Click OK and you’ll see a black or grey screen, like this one:

This is the type of window you’ll see for our Console Application. When you
create your Windows forms, there’s a whole lot of code to get used to. But Console
Applications start off fairly simple, and you can see which part of the programme
is the most important.

As well as the code, have a look on the right hand side and you’ll see the Solution
Explorer. This is where all the files for your project are. (If you can’t
see the Solution Explorer, click View from the C# menu bar at the
top. From the View menu, click Solution Explorer.)

The code itself will look very complicated, if you’re new to programming. We’ll
get to it shortly. For now, right click the Program.cs tab at the top,
and click Close from the menu that appears:

Or just click the X in the top right corner:

Now double click the Program.cs file in the Solution Explorer:

When you double click Program.cs, you should see the code reappear. So this
code is the programme that will run when anyone starts your application.

Now click the arrow symbol next to Properties in the Solution Explorer
above. You’ll see the following:

The file called AssemblyInfo.cs contains information about your programme.
Double click this file to open it up and see the code. Here’s just some of it:

The reddish colour text is something you can change. You can add a Title, Description,
Copyright, Trademark, etc.

But right click the AssemblyInfo.cs tab at the top, and click Close
from the menu. Now, in the Solution Explorer, click the plus symbol next to
References:

These are references to code built-in to C# (you may see more entries in the
Community 2015 and 2017 editions). Much later, you’ll see how to add your own
files to this section.

In Visual Studio Community 2019, you may also see lines that say references.
These will be grey. It’s part of a new addition called CodeLens.
If you don’t want to see these lines, click Tools on the menu
bar at the top. From the Tools menu, click on Options at the
bottom. You’ll see a dialogue box appear. Expand the Text Editor
item, then All Languages. Select CodeLens. Deselect the
Enable CodeLens option:

Before we add some code, let’s save the project. We’ll do that in the
next part below.