Building a console application

To test the installation, let's make a simple console application that outputs Hello C# running cross-platform!.

Creating the source files

We need to enter some commands in the Terminal prompt to:

• Create a new directory named ConsoleApp and change to it
• Create two files named program.cs and project.json
• Start Visual Studio Code so that we can edit the files in an IDE

Here are the commands to enter:

mkdir ConsoleApp
cd ConsoleApp
touch program.cs
touch project.json
code .

Editing the code

In Visual Studio Code, click on the program.cs file on the left-hand side and then enter these statements:

using static System.Console;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        WriteLine("Hello C#, running cross-platform!");
    }
}

When targeting the .NET Framework, a developer can rely on the fact that if the .NET Framework has been installed, then all the base class libraries would be available to them. This means the developer could compile...