Visual Studio® 2008 ALL-IN-ONE DESK REFERENCE FOR DUMMIES®

Chapter I.1. What Is Visual Studio?

What does it take to write software? You need, at minimum, three basic items:

• A text editor, such as Notepad

• A programming language, such as Visual Basic or C#

• A compiler that can convert the programming language into a language your computer can understand

Note

A programming language is a language that humans can understand and use to write computer programs. Computers understand only machine language, which is why a compiler has to translate the program from the human-readable programming language into machine language.

If all you need is Notepad to write computer programs, why are so many software-building tools, as well as books about software-building tools, on the market? Why is the software-tools industry a multi-billion-dollar-per-year industry? The reason is that building software with tools such as Notepad would be slow because the code would have to be interpreted (similar to DOS batch files). And companies aren't paying their software developers to show off how well they can memorize language syntax. No, companies are paying software developers to build working software in the least amount of time possible and with the fewest resources, thus making quality development tools essential.

Have you ever opened a program up with Notepad? When you do, all you see is strange-looking characters. It's not human-readable. That's because someone wrote the program with a human-readable language and then compiled it into machine code.

Just to be completely ...