Head First C#

Chapter 2. It’s All Just Code: Under the Hood

You’re a programmer, not just an IDE-user.

You can get a lot of work done using the IDE. But there’s only so far it can take you. Sure, there are a lot of repetitive tasks that you do when you build an application. And the IDE is great at doing those things for you. But working with the IDE is only the beginning. You can get your programs to do so much more—and writing C# code is how you do it. Once you get the hang of coding, there’s nothing your programs can’t do.

When you’re doing this...

The IDE is a powerful tool—but that’s all it is, a tool for you to use. Every time you change your project or drag and drop something in the IDE, it creates code automatically. It’s really good at writing boilerplate code, or code that can be reused easily without requiring much customization.

Let’s look at what the IDE does in typical application development, when you’re...

...the IDE does this

Every time you make a change in the IDE, it makes a change to the code, which means it changes the files that contain that code. Sometimes it just modifies a few lines, but other times it adds entire files to your project.

Where programs come from

A C# program may start out as statements in a bunch of files, but it ends up as a program running in your computer. Here’s ...