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Go Off-Platform with C#

By the end of this article you will be able to run a C# console application on your own computer!

C#, like any programming language, is a way to communicate with your computer: giving it commands to print things to a console, lay out a website, run a video game, etc. At this point we assume you’ve seen a C# console application in the Codecademy learning environment. If you haven’t, take the first lesson.

To use C#, we need to teach your computer how to understand the language. We do this by downloading some free software.

There are multiple options, but we recommend downloading Microsoft Visual Studio. This app helps you write, debug, and run C# code. It is maintained by the same company that first developed the C# language and it’s very popular amongst C# developers. In a 2017 survey of over 5,000 people, the software company JetBrains found that 92% of C# developers use Visual Studio to write and run C# code on their own computers.

Everyone’s computer system, sometimes called a local development environment, is different. That means that everyone’s setup process will be different as well. We’ve included videos and documentation that describe the process for MacOS, Windows, and Linux. Take your pick and happy coding!

• Setting up C# on MacOS
• Setting up C# on Windows
• Setting up C# on Linux: This links to MonoDevelop, a good replacement for Visual Studio (since VS isn’t available on Linux at the time of writing this article)