ADD COMMENTS TO CODE

C# lets you add comments to your code so you can remind yourself and tell others who view your code what you have done. If you update your code,

comments can tell you what you did when you wrote that string of code. Comments also tell others what you did to the code in case someone else has to review or change your code. In sum, comments show that you are a polite programmer.

Like Java and C++, Visual C# indicates comments with two forward slash marks (//). Visual C# also marks comments in green and automatically adds comments to your code if you

create a new Visual C# project that is something other than an empty project (such as a form or console application). These comments provide information about what certain code does and also include “to do” information about what code you should add to the program skeleton.

If you have only a few words in your comments, you can add the comments to the right of the code line. If you want to say more, you can add multiple lines, although it is usually a good idea to break multi-line comments out onto their own lines so people can read your comments more easily.

¤ Click New Project in the Start page.

■ The New Project window appears.

‹ Click the Console Application icon in the Templates pane.

› Type a name for your file.

ˇ Click OK.

■ The Class1.cs code appears in the parent window.

Á Delete the comments within the Main method.

‡ Type a decimal value with a two-slash comment immediately afterward.

■ The comment code color turns green to differentiate your comment from other code.

° Type an integer value and a comment by placing /* at the beginning and an */ at the end of the comment.

■ The comment code turns green to differentiate your comment from other code.

Note: When you finish typing in an asterisk and slash, your comment appears in boldface; this signifies that you have a complete comment.

· Save the program as the filename.

Your first program lets you become acquainted with programming in the MDE window, gives you confidence in programming with C#, and provides the

enjoyment of seeing your first program compile. The Hello, world! program is the ubiquitous first program that people write no matter what programming language you write the program in. Visual C# is brand new, so this task shows you how to write a Hello, world! program so you can announce your program, and Visual C#, to the rest of the world.

You can program your Hello, world! program in several different ways, though this task shows you only one of them. You can view all sample Hello, world! programs in the

Visual Studio .NET online help available in the MDE window. See page 18 for more information about using Visual Studio .NET online help.

You can also download the Hello, world! samples directly from the Hello World Tutorial page in Visual Studio .NET if you want to open and run them without having to type in all of the variants yourself. After you compile the program, the result appears in a hello.exe file that you can run from Visual C# or by opening the file in Windows and viewing the output in an MS-DOS, for Windows 9x and ME, or console, for Windows NT or 2000, window.

Click New Project in the

page.

■ The New Project window appears.

‹ Click the Console Application icon in the Templates pane.

› Type a name for your file.

ˇ Click OK.