Visual Studio® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Programming with Visual Studio 2010

In This Chapter

• Performing common tasks in the Code Editor

• Organizing code in C# and Visual Basic

• Getting started with the basics of C# and Visual Basic

Do you ever get the feeling that sometimes you're not alone? If you've ever written a program with one of the Visual Studio Code Editors, you know what I mean. Writing code in Visual Studio is like having a word processor that knows what you want to say next.

When you start to type code in Visual Studio, helpers appear magically out of nowhere. Like the host at your favorite restaurant, they share with you a list of today's specials: "Might I suggest an Integer, or how about a DataSet, sir?"

Even if you have no clue about all the choices that Visual Studio offers in the convenient pop-up list, just hover your mouse over one of them, and a description appears. Like a museum tour guide, Visual Studio shares with you the intimate details of the programming artifacts you're inspecting.

This chapter shows you some of the magical helpers and guides that Visual Studio uses to help you write better code. You also get a quick overview of how to write programs using two popular .NET languages: C# and Visual Basic.

Using the Code Editor

Although Visual Studio provides a great number of visual designers that allow you to generate code by dragging and dropping controls and components onto visual designers, at some point, you have to write code. Visual Studio really helps you write code by providing you with ...