C# 5.0 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 1 The C# Environment

What’s in This Chapter

• IL and the CLR
• JIT compiling
• Programs and assemblies
• The .NET Framework

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A C# program cannot exist in isolation. You can’t write C# programs without using other tools. You can’t even run a compiled C# program without libraries that provide runtime support.

This chapter describes the tools that you need in the Windows environment to write, compile, and execute C# programs. Most of the time those tools work smoothly behind the scenes, so you don’t need to be aware of their presence. It’s still worth knowing what they are, however, so you know how all the pieces of the C# environment fit together.

Visual Studio

You can write a C# program in a text editor and then use a command-line interface to compile the program. (For example, see “Working with the C# 2.0 Command Line Compiler” at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ms379563.aspx for more information.)

That approach is a lot of work, however, so most C# programmers use Visual Studio.

Visual Studio is a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) that includes code editors, form and window designers, and flexible debugging tools. Some versions also include testing, profiling, team programming, and other tools.

The Visual Studio code editors ...