C Sharp (programming language) facts for kids

C# (pronounced "see sharp") is a computer programming language. It is developed by Microsoft. It was created to use all capacities of .NET platform. The first version was released in 2001. The most recent version is C# 8.0, which was released in September 2019. C# is a modern language. C#'s development team is led by Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of Delphi.

Execution Platform

• The Microsoft .NET platform;
• Free implementation of C# and .NET like Mono developed by Novell, or dotGNU developed by the Free Software Foundation.

Today, C# can be run on most platforms (Windows, Linux, etc.) without changing the source code. C# can be run on the Xbox 360 platform with a special framework.

Syntax

C# code is similar to C++ and Java code. The CLR (Common Language Runtime) is needed in order to run a C# program.

"Hello, World!" example

/* This is a simple program in C#. 
 * It simply shows "Hello, World!" on the screen.
 */
using System;
namespace HelloWorld
{
  class Hello
  {
    static void Main()
    {
      Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
      
      // The piece of code below is optional, but is needed to prevent the program from closing immediately.
      
      Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit.");
      Console.ReadKey();
    }
  } 
}

Basic input example

/ * This program asks for input from the user, i.e. a name. It then prints "Hello [name]", replacing [name] with whatever the person typed in.
 */
using System;
namespace HelloWorld
{
  class Hello
  {
    static void Main()
    {
      Console.WriteLine("Hello, please type in your name:");
      string name = Console.ReadLine();
      Console.WriteLine("Hello {0}",name);
      Console.ReadKey();
    }
  } 
}

Integrated Development Environments

C# can be edited in a number of IDEs (Integrated Development Environments), some of which are listed below:

Windows:

• Microsoft Visual Studio
• SharpDevelop
• Visual C#
• Visual C# Express

Mac OS X:

• MonoDevelop (With limitations)

Unix/Linux:

• MonoDevelop

Related pages

• Object-oriented programming
• C (programming language)
• C++
• Java

See also

In Spanish: C Sharp para niños