C-SHARP - 1.3 Implementation of the development environment

In this video we install everything required to start coding in C#. The course runs on Windows, so we install two pieces of software. First, Visual Studio Community, the free and complete edition of Visual Studio. This is the IDE where we will write code, compile and run our programs. Second, the .NET 5 framework, which is the latest version of Microsoft's development platform at the time of this lesson.

We start by searching Google for "Visual Studio Community", clicking the official download link, then running the installer and pressing Continue. Before clicking Install, we pick the right workloads. Visual Studio can compile C#, C++ and Python and target games, web and mobile — we only enable what we actually need to keep the install small.

Workloads to enable in the installer

• ASP.NET and web development: required to build web apps.
• .NET Desktop development: WPF, WinForms and console apps.
• Mobile development with .NET: Xamarin to ship cross-platform iOS / Android apps.
• Data storage and processing: tooling to manage SQL Server and other databases.

The download takes a while because of the workload sizes, so stay connected to the internet until it finishes. Once Visual Studio is installed, we install the .NET 5 SDK. Search "Download .NET 5.0", pick the SDK (Software Development Kit) — not the runtime — and choose the build matching your operating system. If you do not know whether your Windows is 32-bit or 64-bit, open the start menu and search for "System" to check. Click the download link, run the installer and validate. That completes the setup: Visual Studio + .NET 5 SDK is everything we need to start practising in the next videos.