C For Beginners - Introduction

Hi there! This tutorial is a gentle introduction to the C# programming language.

You'll be learning the basics of C# and programming by following along with the tutorial.

What is programming?

Programming is a way to tell computers to do things.

Computers are very fast at doing things - whether it's calculating complex formulas or finding duplicates in a list with a thousand entries.

But a computer can't do these things by itself. To instruct it to solve a problem, someone else needs to come in, tell the computer to solve the problem and also, how to solve it.

This "someone" is called a programmer. A programmer writes instructions for a computer so that it can solve the problem. But a computer - a machine - can't understand human language. In fact, a computer can only understand machine language - a language that uses only 1s and 0s.

It's possible to write a set of instructions in 1s and 0s, but as humans, this will get really complicated quickly. Not to mention, doing it this way would probably take a human programmer a very long time.

High-level programming languages were created to solve this issue. These programming languages use human-readable elements, but these elements have special meaning as well. They can be translated, either by an interpreter or a compiler into machine code, which the computer can now understand.

C# is one example of a high-level programming language. It was created by Microsoft in 2000 and is one of the top 5 programming languages in use today.

Why C#?

C# is a modern, general-purpose programming language. It's a versatile language that is used to build different types of applications.

Desktop apps, mobile apps, websites, and games are some of the things that are currently being built using C#. Once you've learnt the basics of C#, you can move on to building all kinds of programs!

C# syntax (the structure of the language) is easy to read. It's part of the C family of languages, so learning it will mean you can easily pick up languages like C, Java, JavaScript, and Swift.

C# is a powerful language and allows you to build both simple and complex programs.

Lastly, C# is a popular language, especially in the enterprise sector. Learning C# means you've got a skill that is highly sought by many industries.

Credits

This tutorial was heavily inspired by the Beginners JavaScript tutorial from NodeGirls.