Development environment

Visual Studio

A full development environment with project management, editing, building and debugging in one application.

What it is for

An alternative to VS Code for C# work. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are different applications, not different names for the same app.

Download Visual Studio from Microsoft. Review the edition’s licence; Community has eligibility conditions.
In Visual Studio Installer, select the .NET desktop development workload for these console exercises. Install additional workloads only when your project needs them.

Open Start → Visual Studio.
Choose Open a project or solution and select the supplied .sln or .csproj file. To start fresh, choose Create a new project → Console App (C#).

Where · Visual Studio

In the Visual Studio application and its Solution Explorer. Tool guide

Open Help → About Microsoft Visual Studio.

What you should see: The product name and installed version appear. Visual Studio Installer → Modify shows installed workloads.

Where · Visual Studio

In the Visual Studio application and its Solution Explorer. Tool guide

In Solution Explorer, double-click Program.cs, edit the supplied console program, save, then choose Debug → Start Without Debugging.

What you should see: A console window shows the program output. C# goes in Program.cs; shell commands do not.

No Console App template: check the .NET workload in Visual Studio Installer.
A project needs a newer SDK: use a compatible Visual Studio version and the project’s required SDK.
Opening a folder is not always the same as loading its solution. Select the .sln or .csproj file when supplied.

Some use it only for optional local practice. Each lesson explains what you actually need.

C# · 61 lessons

Guide reviewed 2026-09-09. Menu labels can differ between versions.