Introduction

Visual Studio has been the primary integrated development environment (IDE) for Microsoft software development for several years. Visual Studio 2010 (VS), the subject of this book, is therefore a mature evolution, building upon the success of its predecessors. This book will show you how to leverage Visual Studio 2010 to your advantage, increasing your skill set, and helping you become more productive in building software. The software you will learn to write will be for .NET (pronounced “Dot Net”), which is a Microsoft platform for writing different types of applications.

As the title suggests, this is a book for beginners. However, there are many opinions about who a beginner is, so let’s discuss what beginner means in the context of this book. You should probably have some understanding of what programming is from a general perspective. It would help to have at least written a batch file, macro, or script that instructed the computer to perform some task. A beginner could also be someone who has written software with technology, such as Cobol, Dreamweaver, or Java, but who is unfamiliar with Visual Studio. Whatever your background, this book provides a gradual on-ramp to developing applications with Visual Studio 2010.

This book has 13 chapters and is divided into four parts and a couple of appendixes as reference material. The following provides an overview of each section:

Part I: Understanding Visual Studio 2010 Essentials Chapter 1 begins with an explanation of what VS is, its benefits to you, and what type of applications VS will help you build. Hands-on guidance starts at the point of installation, giving you tips as to what is being installed and where it goes on your computer. Chapters 2 through 4 are an introduction to C# and VB, two of the most widely used programming languages supported in VS. Notice that the titles of these chapters include “Just Enough,” indicating that you will learn the language features you need throughout this book. As you progress through the book, you’ll be exposed to all of the language features discussed and see how they are used. Even if you already know how to program, you might want to peruse the programming language chapters anyway because I’ve sprinkled in dozens of valuable tips that will make your coding experience in VS much more pleasurable.

Part II: Learning the VS 2010 Environment There are a few universal tasks most developers perform every day, which include working with projects, debugging code, and manipulating data. While Chapter 5 is titled “Creating and Building Projects,” there is much involved when working with projects. Pay particular attention to the guidance on assemblies and class libraries, as they tend to become more prominent as your development activities progress beyond simple programs. Regardless of your development philosophy, the need to fix bugs has always existed and will continue to be important in the future. Chapter 6 is designed to help you use the many tools of VS to find and fix bugs. Another common task you’ll have is working with data. VS allows you to create databases, add tables, and much more. When the database is ready to use, you’ll learn how to write code that works with the database. I chose to cover LINQ to SQL because it’s one of the simpler database technologies, yet powerful enough for professional application development.

Part III: Building Programs with VS 2010 With the foundations of programming languages and a feel for the VS environment, you’ll be ready to use VS to build applications. The .NET platform supports various technologies, and this book takes a forward-looking approach, choosing technologies that were the most recently introduced. The focus in these chapters is not to teach you everything about these technologies, which can fill entire books themselves, but rather to show you how to leverage VS in building applications. You’ll get the foundations that will give you a head start in building your own applications. Both Chapters 8 and 10 use a form of Extensible Markup Language (XML) called XML Application Markup Language (XAML). Considering that this is a beginner’s book, I added a couple of appendixes that cover XML and XAML. I recommend that you read the appendixes before reading Chapters 8 and 10. Additionally, you should read Chapter 8 before reading Chapter 10, because many of the same concepts used to work with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), a technology for building desktop applications, are applicable to Silverlight, a technology to build Web applications. The other two chapters in this part will show you how to build Web applications with ASP.NET MVC and how to create Web services with Windows Communications Foundation.

Part IV: Enhancing the VS 2010 Experience In addition to all of the wizards, tools, and editing help that VS offers, you can extend VS to make it work even better. Chapter 12 shows you how to create your own project and project item wizards, how to create code snippets that automatically generate code, and how to create macros that automate the VS environment. If the macro capability you learn about in VS isn’t powerful enough, read Chapter 13, which shows you how to build an Add-In, a program that you can install to add new features to VS.

From installation to customization of the IDE, VS is a helpful and powerful tool. I hope you enjoy this book and that it helps you learn how to make VS work for you.