C# 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Creating Your First C# Console Application

In This Chapter

• A quick introduction to programming

• Creating a simple console application

• Reviewing the console application

• Saving code for later

In this chapter, I explain a little bit about computers, computer languages — including the computer language C# (pronounced see sharp) — and Visual Studio 2010. Then I take you through the steps for creating a simple program written in C#.

Getting a Handle on Computer Languages, C#, and .NET

A computer is an amazingly fast but incredibly stupid servant. Computers will do anything you ask them to (within reason); they do it extremely fast — and they're getting faster all the time.

Unfortunately, computers don't understand anything that resembles a human language. Oh, you may come back at me and say something like, "Hey, my telephone lets me dial my friend by just speaking his name. I know that a tiny computer runs my telephone. So that computer speaks English." But that's a computer program that understands English, not the computer itself.

The language that computers truly understand is machine language. It's possible, but extremely difficult and error-prone, for humans to write machine language.

Humans and computers have decided to meet somewhere in the middle. Programmers create programs in a language that isn't nearly as free as human speech, but it's a lot more flexible and easy to use than machine language. The languages occupying this middle ground — C#, for example — are high-level computer ...