Our lead instructor, Kamel Rushaidat, Ph.D., shares insights on why he loves C# and why others should learn the programing language. If you are looking for an explanation of what C# is, hop over to our blog 10 Things to Know About the .NET Programming Language.
One question that comes mind when people are trying to learn programming for the first time is “What language should I start learning first?” There are a lot of options out there, and we teach a few tracks in our coding bootcamps, but I think that C# would have been my very first choice if it has been around when I started to learn coding.
Since its introduction back in 2000, C# has been gaining a lot popularity, although it is fairly new when compared to other popular programming languages ––– such as Java and C++. I have been using C# since its introduction, and I really enjoy coding with it. I have used it to develop many web, mobile and desktop applications.
Here are my top 5 Reasons on why you Should Learn C#:
1. It’s Easy to Start With
If you choose C# as your first programming language, you can pick up a lot of concepts easily enough. Setting up a hello project is very intuitive. As one of the most popular programming languages, you will have a ton of material on the internet that can help you resolve problems and errors in your code (keep reading to learn more about this). This can be extremely helpful if you just started to learn a new programming language. Plus, Visual Studio (which you use to write C# - see point #3!) is an amazingly powerful and incredibly helpful tool. If you already know Java, C or C++, C# will be fairly easy to learn, as many of the basic program structures and statements are similar.
2. The Ability to Develop Many Kinds of Apps on Several Operating Systems
Through many years, I developed many apps using C#, such as web, desktop, mobile, robot (Lego Mindstorms) applications as well as games (Unity) and REST APIs. C# can be your one-stop shop for all of those applications, so you won’t need to learn a new language to develop a different kinds of applications. This means it has a lot of practicality when developing.
3. Large Availability of Powerful Development Tools
One of the biggest selling points of .NET(C#) is that Microsoft provides a wide suite of powerful tools that can help programmers develop better programs. The most important of all of those tools is by far Visual Studio. Visual Studio is a very powerful and rich Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that provides a wide set of tools to support program development, testing and debugging, performance analysis, version control, deployment, and much more. Visual Studio is a beginning programmer’s best friend.
4. Microsoft has Your Back!
Microsoft is constantly adding new features to the language. Microsoft also provided support for seamless integration with other Microsoft technologies, such as Microsoft SQL server, cloud computing, Azure dep
loyment and many more. Having these features makes the language more versatile, easy to learn and increases its usability.
5. Popularity
If you Google “the most popular programming languages,” C# will be most certainly be one of the top five most commonly used languages. This means that you will find many resources, books, tutorials, videos and more to help you learn C#. Microsoft has a training website, Microsoft’s Virtual Academy, that offers many courses for beginner developers. Other popular sites that provide tutorials include Pluralsight, LearnCS.org, and Complete C# Tutorial.
Many companies use C# to develop applications, such as Rocket Mortgage, Domino’s Pizza, Sears, NBC news website and many more. (Learn more about this in our blog 5 Companies that use .NET)
I hope that those reasons are enough to convince you to start learning C#! See you on stackoverflow.com! ☺