Summary

This chapter's goals were as follows :

• To introduce Visual Studio .NET

• To review the .NET project types and project templates

• To choose among the .NET language choices

• To develop your first .NET programs

In this chapter, you reviewed several features of VS .NET. You started with launching the application and then you learned about the application's feature set. You reviewed the project types and project templates, and you explored several specific choices. You then moved on to read about the choice I made in this book of limiting the code chapter code samples to VB .NET and COBOL .NET (two very good language choices). Finally, you created two console "Hello, World" applications.

I trust that the sample "Hello, World" applications whetted your appetite for more .NET code using both COBOL .NET and VB .NET. There is a lot more to come. You have come far, yet you are just getting started. In subsequent chapters, you will learn more about the .NET platform, additional VS .NET features, how to build Web and Windows applications, and more. You will find that each chapter will bring you one (big) step closer to being proficient and comfortable developing .NET applications.

In the next chapter, you will examine yet more program code. In that chapter, you will start with the basics and review common programming tasks at a granular level. From there, you will drill down further to look at Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL). The next chapter concludes with a review of some debugging and testing options. Sound interesting? Good. See you in the next chapter.