Programming in C#: A Beginner’s Tutorial

Introduction to C#:

C# (pronounced “C sharp”) is a powerful, modern programming language developed by Microsoft. It’s widely used for developing a variety of applications, including desktop, web, and mobile applications. C# is part of the .NET framework, which provides a rich set of libraries and tools for building software.

Setting Up Your Development Environment:

Before you start writing C# code, you’ll need to set up your development environment. Here’s what you’ll need:

1. IDE (Integrated Development Environment): Visual Studio is the recommended IDE for C# development. You can download Visual Studio Community edition for free from the official website.
2. .NET SDK: Make sure you have the .NET SDK installed on your machine. You can download it from the .NET website.

Once you have Visual Studio installed, you’re ready to start coding!

Your First C# Program:

Let’s start with a simple “Hello, World!” program. This program will display the text “Hello, World!” on the console.

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
    }
}

Here’s what this program does:

• using System;: This line tells the compiler to include the System namespace, which contains basic input/output functionality.
• class Program: Defines a class named Program.
• static void Main(): This is the entry point of the program. It’s a method called Main that doesn’t return any value (void) and is marked as static, meaning it belongs to the class itself rather than an instance of the class.
• Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");: This line prints the text “Hello, World!” to the console.

Variables and Data Types:

In C#, variables are used to store data. Each variable has a data type that determines the kind of data it can store. Here are some basic data types in C#:

• int: Integer numbers (e.g., 1, 2, -5).
• double: Double-precision floating-point numbers (e.g., 3.14, -0.5).
• bool: Boolean values (e.g., true, false).
• string: Textual data (e.g., “hello”, “world”).

Here’s an example of how to declare and use variables:

int number = 10;
double pi = 3.14;
bool isTrue = true;
string message = "Hello, C#!";

Control Flow Statements:

Control flow statements allow you to control the flow of execution in your program. Some common control flow statements in C# are:

• if statement: Executes a block of code if a condition is true.
• else statement: Executes a block of code if the if condition is false.
• else if statement: Allows you to check additional conditions if the previous if condition is false.
• switch statement: Allows you to select one of many code blocks to execute.

Here’s an example of how to use an if statement:

int x = 10;

if (x > 0)
{
    Console.WriteLine("x is positive");
}
else if (x < 0)
{
    Console.WriteLine("x is negative");
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("x is zero");
}