I love C# so much that I use it all the time on Ubuntu thanks to Monodevelop, I’ve even made a program to send data to a Pic18f2550 using the usb port, all in C#.
you should keep in mind making a new part in this awesome tutorial, to show how to use monodevelop on ubuntu or even in a mac. that would be great!

Greetings from Colombia.

you forgot to mention RedGate Reflector

i think Resharper is miles ahead of visual assist x

I also love the .NET platform. I love C#, I love LINQ, I love the .NET technologies, I love F#, I love everything somehow connected to .NET, .NET languages, etc. Give me more .NET and I’ll be happy. Go to hell with Java 7.

I have been using C# for a couple years, and its great! For years I only knew embedded programming, and it was really tough to develop things when I couldn’t even make a simple PC app to communicate with the microcontroller! Now I can whip up simple utilities, or even complex ones, pretty quickly.

And for what its worth, one of my buddies who is a $130k/yr veteran programmer recently started doing some stuff with C#, and he really likes it. He does a lot of C and Python, but he said C# has really nice structure and he likes the IDE. A lot of people gripe about C# for some reason, but its actually really nice. Yeah, you get more control with C++, but sometimes you don’t need that much control.
-Taylor

So what is being hacked? Anything?

Someone mentioned Silverlight, Um isn’t that dead yet? It’s only real use is to deliver DRM’ed content.

HTML5 doesn’t actually Need it, video is better done with ogg/theora or better yet VP8 (better picture less memory, faster and OPEN)

x264 may be open, but it’s still has strings attaching it to one vendor.

Anyway silverlight, C# who wants a development environment limited by the economic motives of the companies tied to it.
M$, apple, nokia etc etc gets a hair up it’s ### and sorry all your work and your site has to be re-done.
Proponents of such systems make headaches for those who try to make content available on as many platforms as they can.

So I develop in silverlight, oh sorry Iphone, android Linux etc etc.. WHY? Anyway after the DISASTER NBC had with the Olympics silverlight is effectively dead. Most systems STILL can’t view the Olympics!!

NBC DROPPED IT.

“Now there’s a coincidence, I downloaded Visual C# Express not two hours ago. I need a program that takes a BMP stored in RGB565 format and spits out C-source describing an array containing the hex values of the file so that I can use it in a PIC+LCD project (hah, good luck deciphering that one).”

That would be easy in MATLAB.

@Eric, just get any language that can read the file,and the rgb pixel color (most game dev systems) and dump into a file, crap 2 off the top of my head with tutorials are processing and love2d, probably pygame

or in other words don’t multipost off topic

I have this love have thing with C# … but fortunately love portion is slightly more, depending on context and what I’m working on. Admittedly, I have only dabbled in C#, so my observations might be somewhat limited.

I absolutely love the managed allocation concept in C#, it’s something C++ should adopt natively as a standard. Even C++ CLI is ok (which is what I use for some projects), but the syntax can be a bit hairy.

The extensive use of namespaces (as opposed to header files declarations) in C# .NET libraries are well organised too. Again, I wish C++ compilers would use this concept.

Getter/setter methods rock.

That said, I’m not too enthused about having both class declarations and implementations in one big scope. Things get a bit messy when you have huge classes to deal with. (Maybe this is something I need to brush up on?)

VisualStudio Express seems to be quite slow when dealing with C# source code, which annoys me.

The #1 thing that really annoys me is the lack of native code generation in C#. Not a fan of MSIL at all, and quite frankly the JIT compiler doesn’t even start to compare with natively compiled C++ code in terms of CPU performance. While this may not be a big deal if you do mostly GUI programming, but for things like serious CPU based data processing, it doesn’t cut the mustard.

I will definitely be following this, I happen to love C# as well as most of everyone here. I would like to see some insight with respect to OpenGL (I know its not meant for C#) if possible. I have recently completed a 3D laser scanner (project website coming soon) using C#, and the OpenGL libraries & linking are lacking substantially (I’ve tried SharpGL, Tao Framework, OpenTK,… etc)

C# + LibUsbDotNet = awesome USB microcontroller projects

The are a number of readers who don’t use windows, osx or even linux and will these readers may start reading other sites more and hackaday less as the number of ms, apple or ubuntu hacks increases.
Hoping HAD keeps its balance.

Great article, I look forward to follow up material.

As a software developer I have used C# as my primary language for the last 9 years. The whole .NET eco system has matured greatly. My only gripe was moving from .Net1.1 to 2 as there were some code breaking changes to the libraries.

I’m currently working on a C# winforms GUI to drive a 4WD robot over wifi using a web cam and an xbox 360 controller. The MS tools are making this a fairly painless and even fun endeavour.

Keep up the great work guys :)

The MS page you linked to:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/k1sx6ed2.aspx

is broken. None of the example code is displayed.

Diluting your content with stuff that has nothing to do with hacks may not be the best long-term strategy. [2]
Was softwaretutorialaday.com not available? [2]

Just as a side note, you mentioned the express edition, but if you have a .edu e-mail address, you can go to https://www.dreamspark.com/ and download VS 2005, 2008 and 2010 Professional Edition for free from Microsoft… Also Expression Studio 4 Ultimate, Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2008 R2 Standard editions, Windows Embedded CE 6.0, SQL Server 2008 Developer, etc… This probably isn’t news for many but it would be worth mentioning in the article as I imagine there are a lot of college students here.

I will never use a dot net product. I think I can swing my company to switch to Linux and a whole different toolchain before that happens. (We’re a small shop, and I’m both the in-house and product development IT department.)

dot-Net was a swipe at Java, in M$ typical embrace-extend-choke fashion, and in order to make their move M$ obsoleted billions of lines of working code by making the “next generation” of Visual Studio totally incompatible with VS6. It wasn’t a next generation at all; it was a totally new and different product with new and different capabilities. Were some of those capabilities good? Yeah, probably. But I’m more concerned with ten years of legacy apps that are no longer supported by any supported M$ development tool.

Fuck Microsoft and their next new product too. My existing code is now better supported under Linux via WIne than by the company that sold me the original development tools. You hitch your wagon to Microsoft’s horse at your peril.

yes please post something more than 3 paragraphs that do not explain anything and a link list next time

I like this one especially

“”This will take you from the basics of installing Visual Studio 2010 Express”"

then

“”For the sake of customization we won’t walk through the rest of the install”"

hella useful! apparently we are too stupid that we need instructions to download a file and run it, but too smart for the rest of the install

good article

The “not-a-hack” comments will never stop will they? I’m guessing that most hack-a-day readers, myself included, enjoy these “non-hack” posts. If we didn’t, the ad revenue from this site would have suffered, and the posts would have stopped a while ago.

I’m a pretty hardcore c++/python kind of guy, but I’ve been meaning to try c# out for a long time now. Thanks for the tutorial, keep them coming.

@amk You’re right that intro-level posts are important, but this is:

-a link to download VS2010
-a link to what I assume is a hello world tutorial
-a high-visibility advertisement for a $250 commercial product
-links to SVN/autodoc plugins

Only two of those are useful to beginners, and all the links were broken when I tried them. This looks like an SEO post plain and simple.

I hope I’m wrong and that there’ll be further tutorials as promised, though. I’ve been meaning to give C# a go; it looks like a nice middle ground between C++ and functional languages/Python. Heck, it’s got a proper “for” statement!

The main thing delaying me is I’m not sure what the killer application of C# is. I know it’s good with GUIs, but what else? I suspect LINQ might do some sorcery with databases, but haven’t run into a good example yet.

What do you guys think?

for vim bindings use ViEmu
I’m using VisualSVN over AnhkSVN
GhostDoc is overkill since too much commenting hides your code
Resharper is a must for IDE enhancements

skip express and go to monodevelop/sharpdevelop it lets you use solutions

When I want to waste time fixing dangling references, memory leaks, and struggling with poorly supported APIs, I use C++.

When I actually want to get some work done, I use C#

@lexi
> When I want to waste time fixing dangling references, memory leaks, and struggling with poorly supported APIs, I use C++.

Dude, if C++ is too hard for you, be honest and put it straight: C++ is too hard for me, so I use C#.

Besides, C# is pretty unportable. Believe me, If you ever would like your app to be portable across linux/windows/mac/symbian – C# is NOT your choice. QT&C++ is WAY better.

Not only unportable, it’s totally useless for embedded development, which _used_ to be the main focus of this site.
Desktop applications development isn’t interesting. I do plenty of it because I occasionally need a program that doesn’t exist, but I don’t ever want to read about it on a site for hacking.

It surprise me how many people try to cut corners instead applying reliable and proper way, in a long run they only lose time since all they knowledge is worthless when company they dependent on decide to make changes.
I newer even bother to look at something what tied to single company or platform

@Necromant

Portability is not a concern for me, None of my clients ask for portable code. They ask for something that will work in Windows and they want it developed as fast as possible.

C++ is not to hard for me. I was a c++/QT coder for 3 years before becoming a C# dev. I also had the same mindset at you before I moved over to C# “C# and MS sucks, C++ is the greatest thing since sliced bread” Until all of my clients started requesting C# dev because it saves so much development time. And when portability isn’t an issue, why should I waste time using QT? And when the database/network is the system bottleneck and not the speed of the code, who cares that it’s slower? No one.

You probably have never even tried using c# and visual studio, thats why you say it sucks. Do you know what commercial QT licenses on windows cost? More than a copy of Visual Studio, I can guarantee it.

Point is, You get more work done, more clients request it, portability and speed aren’t issues for me, and it pays exactly the same.

I shouldn’t worry, it’s like religion – Anyone who cares about religion to any degree is hysterically over-protective of “their” religion and believes all other religions are wrong. Most of the rest of the world think each religion has reasonable traits but generally will work with whatever floats their boat, will try a bit of everything or ignore the ones they don’t find useful and laughs at the religious nut on the corner who’s getting all upset that no-one is taking him seriously.

Use what helps you at the time. There will always be someone who thinks what you’re doing is correct and wants to pay you for it. IF it’s for home use, just use whatever is easiest for the job and ignore all the religious nuts telling you you’re coding to the wrong God.

Bob wrote: “To all the hating noobs: Professionals use whatever language is appropriate be that c#, Java, python or whatever.”

What I observe is that many professionals are even more “religious” when it comes to how they do their work, because they’ve become accustomed to their software/environment for years and thus don’t /know/ or /want to know/ much else. After all, they see it as competition.

As to C#: What exactly does “appropriate” mean?

I like to think more of “options” and “possibilities”.

How well is C# suited for all the mobile computing ahead?

A colleague of mine connects his phone to an LCD, keyboard and mouse via docking station and this is his everyday working station. Advantage: He has all data right at his fingertips, everywhere, everytime.

@Tom#, what Bob means is, “Use the language suitabl for the job”

Use PHP for webdevelopment — ASP sucks!
Use C# for Windows GUI app development — use C++/Qt or C/GTK+ for GNU/Linux GUI app development.

Use only Lisp or go home.

> You probably have never even tried using c# and visual studio, thats why you say it sucks. Do you know what commercial QT licenses on windows cost? More than a copy of Visual Studio, I can guarantee it.

Are there any problems with cryochambers? Anyway, Welcome to the 21st century – QT is LGPL here!

@all the Java cheerleaders/C# haters:

1. C# runs on 3 systems (Linux/MacOS/Windows), not one.

2. Most C# < 4.0 would compile in Mono and run with trivial changes. I remember the first time I tried compiling VS source with a fairly sizable 3.5 project and was amazed. If you follow SOLID principles, your issues should be trivial.

3. C# compiles to native code and is blazing fast, so those who claim it is somehow slower than a memory/resource hog like Java obviously have never seen a C# program running on Mono. (Or windows for that matter). Now, If anybody has EVER seen a large scale Java application that didn't pose memory or cpu resource issues I'd like to hear about it, because I haven't seen one in 10 years despite seeing about 30 or so on very serious hardware.

4. Anybody who suggests that Java is a great enterprise language has either never been involved with a Java enterprise application, or is blissfully proud of each travesty they wreck upon the world. Please stop. Your code sucks and that's why you can't finish a project (please pick any 2 of the following:) on time, on budget and with required functionality.

5. Anybody who would suggest coding in C++ is simply a matter of adequate expertise has obviously never met your average corporate developer, (or tried to hire a team of them). [Usually Java fan boys, btw] This is no different than somebody in the 90's telling a client that they should bypass VB6 and use C for a Windows GUI/DB app:

It's absolutely nuts and will result in: needlessly higher costs and a very high probability of failure unless it will only be written by one or two guys and then immediately launched into space without a radio-data link.

5. 'coding for thirty years' != 'authoritative voice'. I've been coding for over a decade, but I hardly think that any of my earlier experience is more than a conceptual stepping stone to my last three years of work. Maybe people have different experiences, but most people I meet who claim to have been coding for 'n' decades are hopelessly stranded on some technology or methodology that psychologically blocks them from getting up to date. My only doubt is whether the inevitable follow up will be: 'These kids today don't know anything' or 'Offshore development has made it impossible to keep a job in programming'. (The first may be true but is unhelpful, the second is definitely false.)

Anyone who is not programming 1′s and 0′s by hand and winding their own magnetic core memories is a sissy.

What a waste of finger muscles. But I cannot resist.

C# is an easy to learn alternative to lots of other languages, learning it will not harm your ability to learn other stuff, there are embedded platforms that use .NET, so it isn’t useless for hackery, and what professionals use and how they use it doesn’t have to concern those of us who are not professional programmers.

This kind of bitchfest is like a primate feces flinging contest, or gangs attacking someone for the color they wear. The object is to get something done. I can get things done in a handful of languages. They all aggravate me at one time or another. Microsoft provides the express editions free, so expense is not an issue, and there are lots of things to learn before worrying about memory leaks and bullshit, so anything that makes life easier is OK by me.

So, to any noob unsure of what to do: try it out if it sounds interesting, and look at what has been done with it- Coding 4 Fun or CodeProject has lots of interesting examples, some involving neat hardware. It might teach you something, and you can uninstall it if you discover that it is the antichrist. Never listen to advice from someone who merely denounces. It isn’t useful. Real debates are possible, but if you are a noob, you probably wouldn’t appreciate them, so go make something cool, and use whatever tool you want until you hit a performance brick wall that forces you to learn something else.

Seriously? Everybody loves C# so much here? What’s wrong with you people?

Now go and install GCC people. Free yourselves.

forgot to say:

currently i work mainly with c# and if needed in c++ but worked with java,c, php.

13 years of work experience

@DaveEaton: lol no one does that any more sad to say. The funny thing is, I’ve found bugs in datasheets for a few “coughMicrochip, coughAnalogDevice” companies that had errors in the register “values” after sanity-checking my self and finally sitting there looking at the returned data on a logic analyzer, finally came to conclusion. People can’t count binary. And just because it’s a multi-billion dollar company, doesn’t mean squat. I think they have like one person proof reading the datasheets or something.

@DaveEaton Totally agree with you. I’ve given it a go and it makes learning to code a lot easier than simply copying into notepad and compiling.

The included tutorials are excellent and the language is very similar to other programming languages. Being the noob I am, I find this the be a great way of being introduced to coding.

“”all those 6 figure years of income I’ve made”"

the 2 figures after the decimal point don’t count

In my opinion, anyone who thinks C++ beats C# clearly has no reasonable knowledge of C#

“f you learn C# and Access you’ve pretty much wasted your time instead of developing marketable skills.”

You’re a moron, with the most myopic of viewpoints I’ve ever seen from a ‘developer’.

“Seriously? Everybody loves C# so much here? What’s wrong with you people?”

Clearly we’re smarter than you.

“i Really Like C#, aside from the lack of support for Pointers. but you can always make a DLL in Delphi or C and add it as reference and use within C#. best of both worlds. 8)”

C# does not lack support for pointers. You need to research PINVOKE.

“C# is slower than Java and less portable.

“C# also has patent encumbrances and Microsoft’s long history of suckering people into investing in their proprietary systems and then strategically abandoning them.”

Nothing but a Microsoft Hater. Plane and simple. The facts do not support your claims.

“Use PHP for webdevelopment — ASP sucks!
Use C# for Windows GUI app development — use C++/Qt or C/GTK+ for GNU/Linux GUI app development”

PHP, really? Come into the 21st century brother, no flying cars, but we have smarty phones.

… Yup I have lots of time on my hands to bitch at MS haters about near sighted comments from the uninformed. That’s because I use a nice managed framework and get my work done in a lot less time.

Go bask in the green glow of your iSeries, freakin’ dinosaurs.