Getting to Know Visual Studio.Net
© Jose Aniceto
When going to school, in order to get good grades, the conditions and environment must be conducive to studying. Access to the library and knowing the librarian can be a tremendous help. Eating the proper food and most importantly easy access to a computer and printer is equally important. The same goes for learning a new programming language. The environment must be ideal that it would encourage learning. We've all been frustrated with the development tools that promise the world and fail to deliver.
A good programmer must always have a good programming tool. Unfortunately, there's only one compiler in the market that supports C# and the .Net platform - Visual Studio.Net. Close your eyes for a minute and imagine having the programming power of Visual C++ and yet be able to develop Windows applications similar to Visual Basic. Open your eyes and right in front of you is Visual Studio.Net.
When starting Visual Studio for the first time, developers will get a start page similar to a workspace in Visual C++. There are two ways of creating a new C# project, first is by going through the menu (File | New | Projects) or through the start page. When going through the start page (see Figure 1), select the "Get Started" menu and click on the "New Project" button.
After deciding to create a new C# project, the New Project (see Figure 2) dialog box will be displayed. Notice that on the left window you'll have different types of projects. To develop a C# application, select Visual C# Projects. On the left side is a list of possible templates Visual Studio can use for your C# project. This is similar to the Project Wizard in Visual Studio 6.0.
For the purpose of this article, select Windows Application. This template will allow you to develop applications that would run on the Windows environment. If you want to develop web applications, select from the several options presented on the right side of the dialog box.
Similar to Visual Basic, your C# project will be presented with an empty form and you can start adding controls. Windows controls are grouped together conveniently in the Toolbox, which slides in and out of the way. Similar to Visual Basic, you can right click on the workspace and view the code that sits underneath the form. The following is the sample code generated by Visual Studio. This is a C# program and notice how small it is compared to Visual C++. The sample Windows application is not doing much, but you can resize it, minimize and maximize.
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