How To: Beginner Programming: Part 1 - Hello World

Hello, and welcome to How To: Beginner Programming,

a multi-part guide to your first steps in the world of programming

In these following episodes, I'll be demonstrating

the basic principles of programming,

from creating your first application,

to developing your own objects.

Now, don't worry yet if you have no idea what any of those are,

we'll get to that.

In the first episode, I'll demonstrate how to set up your

programming environment, or "workbench",

and run a simple 'hello world' command,

commenting on each step throughout

so you guys know what's going on.

First things first:

You'll need an environment to work in, as well as a language to use.

Now, this is entirely up to preference,

but I'll be using Visual Studio Express, which is available for free.

I'll leave a link in the description.

It's available from the website for free,

and I'll be using C# (pronounced "see sharp") to program.

I suggest those of you who have no idea what you're doing,

or are first-time learners,

also follow along in C#.

Otherwise it might get confusing with syntax.

Once you've got it downloaded and installed,

open it up and start a new project.

Now, this will display three basic programming languages.

Visual Basic, which I would not recommend,

is good for beginners, but it's a bit too simplistic,

and not pretty to use, either.

Visual C++, which I would not recommend for beginners,

because you have to worry about so much [more than C#].

For a simple 'hello world' program, C++ is simple enough,

but when you get to more stuff it gets a bit more complicated,

especially with arrays.

Again, we'll get to that in due time,

but for now we'll be using C#.

Start a console application.

Now this is just a basic "black box window" that pops up,

and you can input and output text to it.

I'll be calling it "HelloWorld"

because that's what we're going to be doing with it:

outputting "hello world" to the screen...

exciting stuff!

This has created the project, as well as a "main" method.

This is where all of the code we're going to write

will be ran from.

Every application has one of these ["main" methods].

Whenever you run an application,

it will look for the "main" method and run whatever is inside.

It will continue throughout until it reaches the endpoint.

For the purpose of the first video,

we're just outputting a message to the console window.

To do this, we write

"Console.WriteLine()"

and then whatever message you want inside here.

For the purpose of this, again,

"Hello World!"

Whenever you're starting a new language,

you can usually find a "Hello world" example,

to show you the syntax [of the language].

So this is accessing the "Console".

And using the method, "WriteLine".

And passing the value, "Hello World!".

Now, every line you write, in most languages,

you have to put a semicolon at the end

as if to say, "That's the end of the line. No more on this line."

Otherwise, (showing an example)...

the program won't know what to do.

Once we've written this, we need a

"Console.ReadLine()"

which stops the program from closing,

so the user has time to actually read the message, "Hello World!"

If we ran the program without "Console.ReadLine()"...

it will just open up and instantly close!

So we use "Console.ReadLine()", or "Console.Read()"

to stop it from closing so we have time to read it.

All "Console.ReadLine()" does is it waits for the user

to input any text and then press enter.

When enter is pressed, the value is passed into the "Console.ReadLine()",

and if we had something here, like (example)...

The variable will be assigned the value of the user's input.

For now, don't worry about that;

we're just displaying "Hello World!" to the screen, like this...

Press enter when you're done.

That's it for a "Hello world"!

That's part one of, "How To: Beginner Programming".

Further parts will be released shortly,

but I'll leave a gap between videos to allow you to ask questions,

and I'll answer them at the start of the following part.

The gap between the first and second episodes won't be too long.

Maybe do a bit of research before the next episode,

so you're a bit ahead of everything,

and any assumptions I accidentally make will make sense to you.

Thanks for watching, and leave any questions in the comment section below,

and I'll try to answer them at the start of the next episode.

Thanks for watching!