Beginning C# 3.0

2.3. Creating a Simple Application Using Objects

Now let's use the five program steps you just learned to write a simple program. The goal of the program is to gather address information about the user and then simply redisplay that information as if it were a mailing label. For the time being you won't actually do anything with the information, but after you get a little more C# programming under your belt, you could use this program as an input process for some larger programming task, like creating a customer account or writing your own personal mailing list. The primary objective here, however, is to get you familiar with using a few of the objects that are provided to you as part of Visual Studio and .NET.

2.3.1. Using the Program Steps to Create a Program Plan

Your first task is to develop a plan for solving the task at hand. A good place to start the plan is with the five program steps presented earlier.

2.3.1.1. Step 1: Initialization

This is a simple program and you don't really have any fancy initialization to do. Any necessary initialization tasks are done automatically for you by Visual Studio. We'll take a look at the Visual Studio's background handiwork a little later.

2.3.1.2. Step 2: Input

This is the step where you must ask yourself, "What information do I need to solve the programming task at hand?" Because you want to arrange user information the way a mailing label does, you need to know the user's:

1. Name

2. Street address

3. City

4. State

5. Zip (or postal) code

You could ...