Head First C#, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2. It’s all Just Code: Under the hood

You’re a programmer, not just an IDE user.

You can get a lot of work done using the IDE. But there’s only so far it can take you. Sure, there are a lot of repetitive tasks that you do when you build an application. And the IDE is great at doing those things for you. But working with the IDE is only the beginning. You can get your programs to do so much more—and writing C# code is how you do it. Once you get the hang of coding, there’s nothing your programs can’t do.

When you’re doing this...

The IDE is a powerful tool—but that’s all it is, a tool for you to use. Every time you change your project or drag and drop something in the IDE, it creates code automatically. It’s really good at writing boilerplate code, or code that can be reused easily without requiring much customization.

Let’s look at what the IDE does in a typical application development, when you’re...

• ➊ CREATING A WINDOWS STORE PROJECT

  There are several kinds of applications the IDE lets you build. We’ll be concentrating on Windows Store applications for now—you’ll learn about other kinds of applications in the next chapter.

  

• ➋ DRAGGING A CONTROL OUT OF THE TOOLBOX AND ONTO YOUR PAGE, AND THEN DOUBLE-CLICKING IT

  Controls are how you make things happen in your page. In this chapter, ...