1: Creating Your First C# Windows Program in Visual C#.NET

Make Code128 in Visual C#.NET 1: Creating Your First C# Windows Program

C# is Flexible: C# programs can execute on the current machine, or they can be transmitted over the Web and executed on some distant computer Powerful: C# has essentially the same command set as C++, but with the rough edges filed smooth Easier to use: C# modifies the commands responsible for most C++ errors so you spend far less time chasing down those errors Visually oriented: The NET code library that C# uses for many of its capabilities provides the help needed to readily create complicated display frames with drop-down lists, tabbed windows, grouped buttons, scroll bars, and background images, to name just a few Internet friendly: C# plays a pivotal role in the NET Framework, Microsoft s current approach to programming for Windows, the Internet, and beyond NET is pronounced dot net Secure: Any language intended for use on the Internet must include serious security to protect against malevolent hackers Finally, C# is an integral part of NET

NET began a few years ago as Microsoft s strategy to open up the Web to mere mortals like you and me Today it s bigger than that, encompassing everything Microsoft does In particular, it s the new way to program for Windows It also gives a C-based language, C#, the simple, visual tools that made Visual Basic so popular A little background will help you see the roots of C# and NET Internet programming was traditionally very difficult in older languages like C and C++ Sun Microsystems responded to that problem by creating the Java programming language To create Java, Sun took the grammar of C++, made it a lot more user friendly, and centered it around distributed development When programmers say distributed, they re describing geographically dispersed computers running programs that talk to each other in many cases, via the Internet When Microsoft licensed Java some years ago, it ran into legal difficulties with Sun over changes it wanted to make to the language As a result, Microsoft more or less gave up on Java and started looking for ways to compete with it

Being forced out of Java was just as well because Java has a serious problem: Although Java is a capable language, you pretty much have to write your entire program in Java to get its full benefit Microsoft had too many developers and too many millions of lines of existing source code, so Microsoft had to come up with some way to support multiple languages Enter NET NET is a framework, in many ways similar to Java s libraries, because the C# language is highly similar to the Java language Just as Java is both the language itself and its extensive code library, C# is really much more than just the keywords and syntax of the C# language It s those things empowered by a thoroughly object-oriented library containing thousands of code elements that simplify doing about any kind of programming you can imagine, from Web-based databases to cryptography to the humble Windows dialog box The previous generation platform was made up of a hodgepodge of tools with cryptic names NET updates all that with Visual Studio 2005, with more focused NET versions of its Web and database technologies, newer versions of Windows, and NET-enabled servers NET supports emerging communication standards such as XML and SOAP rather than Microsoft s proprietary formats Finally, NET supports the hottest buzzwords since object-oriented: Web Services Microsoft would claim that NET is much superior to Sun s suite of Web tools based on Java, but that s not the point Unlike Java, NET does not require you to rewrite existing programs A Visual Basic programmer can add just a few lines to make an existing program Web knowledgeable (meaning that it knows how to get data off the Internet) NET supports all the common Microsoft languages and more than 40 other languages written by third-party vendors (see wwwgotdotnetcom/team/lang for the latest list) However, C# is the flagship language of the NET fleet C# is always the first language to access every new feature of NET

What is Visual Studio 2005 What about Visual C#

You sure ask lots of questions The first Visual language from Microsoft was Visual Basic, code-named Thunder The first popular C-based programming language from Microsoft was Visual C++ Like Visual Basic, it was called Visual because it had a built-in graphical user interface (GUI pronounced gooey) This GUI included everything you needed to develop nifty-giffy C++ programs Eventually, Microsoft rolled all its languages into a single environment Visual Studio As Visual Studio 60 started getting a little long in the tooth, developers anxiously awaited Version 7 Shortly before its release, however, Microsoft decided to rename it Visual Studio NET to highlight this new environment s relationship to NET