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Building C# Applications

A

s a C# programmer, you may choose among numerous tools to build .NET applications. The

point of this chapter is to provide a tour of various .NET development options, including, of course,

Visual Studio 2008. The chapter opens, however, with an examination of working with the C#

command-line compiler, csc.exe, and the simplest of all text editors, the Notepad application

that ships with the Microsoft Windows OS.

Once you become comfortable compiling assemblies “IDE-free,” you will then examine various

lightweight editors (such as TextPad and Notepad++) that allow you to author C# source code files

and interact with the compiler in a slightly more sophisticated manner.

While you could work through this entire text using nothing other than csc.exe and a basic

text editor, I’d bet you are also interested in working with feature-rich integrated development

environments (IDEs). To this end, you will be introduced to a free, open source .NET IDE named

SharpDevelop. This IDE rivals the functionality of many commercial .NET development environ-

ments. After briefly examining the Visual C# 2008 Express IDE (which is also free), you will be given

a guided tour of the key features of Visual Studio 2008. This chapter wraps up with a quick tour of a

number of complementary .NET development tools (again, many of which are open source) and

describes where to obtain them.