Chapter 1. What Is Visual Studio?
In This Chapter
Figuring out Visual Studio's role in software development
Seeing Microsoft's vision for Visual Studio
Saying hello to .NET
To be truthful, building software that does more than just say something like "Hello world" requires more than just writing a few lines of code in a text editor. Who knew that business software could be so complex?
That's where tools such as Visual Studio enter the picture. Visual Studio enables you to build software more quickly by offering an advanced editor, compiler, and debugger in a single, easy-to-use package.
From Source Code to Application: How Software Is Written
There are three parts to writing software:
Creation of source code: This source code is human-readable and normally text-based. Source code comes in many flavors depending on the language used. (Chapter 4 contains a lot more information about languages.)
Compilation: During compilation, the source code is translated into binary executable data. This data takes many forms, including a compiler such as the one built into Visual Studio, an interpreter such as the command line (which ultimately creates binary executable data), or a variety of intermediate steps, such as a Java Virtual Machine, which takes pseudocode and converts to binary executable.
Execution of the program: This step takes place as part of the development process while testing and then independently when users run the software. Figure 1-1 displays a summary of this process.
Note
The Visual ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access