Practicing and exploring

Test your knowledge and understanding by answering some questions, get some hands-on practice, and explore, with deeper research into the topics covered in this chapter.

Exercise 1.1 – test your knowledge

Answer the following questions:

1. Why can a programmer use different languages to write applications that run on .NET?
2. What do you type at the Command Prompt to compile the C# source code?
3. What is the Visual Studio 2015 keyboard shortcut to save, compile, and run an application, without attaching the debugger?
4. What is the Visual Studio 2015 keyboard shortcut to view the error list?
5. What does ildasm.exe do?
6. Is the .NET Core better than the .NET Framework?
7. How is .NET Native different from the .NET Core?
8. What does the .NET Portability Analyzer do?
9. What is the difference between Git and GitHub?
10. What is the name of the entry-point method of a .NET application and how should it be declared?

Exercise 1.2 – practice managing Visual Studio Windows

Practice closing and viewing windows, such as Error List and Toolbox.

You can pin, unpin, float, and rearrange windows by dragging their title bars. As you do so, Visual Studio will show blue tinted boxes and overlays to help you to understand where the window will be moved when you release the mouse button.

Tip

You can always reset Visual Studio back to one of the default layouts by clicking on the Tools menu and Import and Export Settings….

Exercise 1.3 – practice coding anywhere

You do not need Visual Studio to practice writing C#. Simply go to the .NET Fiddle website (https://dotnetfiddle.net/) and start coding. It's also a great way to share snippets of C# code with other developers:

Exercise 1.4 – explore topics

Use the following links to read more details about the topics covered in this chapter:

• Visual Studio IDE User's Guide: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn762121.aspx
• Solutions and Projects: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b142f8e7.aspx
• Using IntelliSense: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hcw1s69b.aspx
• Identifying and Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts in Visual Studio: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5zwses53.aspx
• Making your libraries compatible with .NET Core and other .NET Platforms: https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/Documentation/project-docs/support-dotnet-core-instructions.md
• .NET Core: A general purpose managed framework: http://dotnet.github.io
• Leveraging existing code across .NET platforms: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/08/06/leveraging-existing-code-across-net-platforms.aspx
• .NET Command Line Interface (CLI): https://github.com/dotnet/cli
• Use Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server with Git: https://msdn.microsoft.com/Library/vs/alm/Code/git/overview
• The easiest way to connect to your GitHub repositories in Visual Studio: https://visualstudio.github.com/