C# is a programming language that can run on multiple platforms (Windows as well as UNIX based platforms) using the Microsoft .NET framework and the Mono framework. These frameworks take code that is easier to program and interprets it or translating it into a language that can run fast on the computer. C# is not the only language that can run on these frameworks but according to Tiobe, a metric system for popular languages it is the most popular .NET language and the third most popular language overall.

Wikipedia lays out C# goals as the following:

•C# language is intended to be a simple, modern, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language. Original drafts of C# show that it was worked on in 1999 and appeared in 2001. Very new at the time of this tutorials writing compared to C which appeared in the 1960's

•The language, and implementations thereof, should provide support for software engineering by doing tasks that some languages require to be done with long processes such as doing uninitialized variables, and automatic garbage collection. Software robustness, durability, and programmer productivity are important.

•The language is to take advantage of software maintained on the computer as building blocks. This makes it easier for network wide deployments and reduces the amount of redundant code.

•Support for international languages is very important.

•C# is intended to be suitable for writing applications for both hosted and embedded systems, ranging from the very large that use sophisticated operating systems, down to the very small having dedicated functions.

•Although C# applications are intended to be economical with regard to memory and processing power requirements, the language was not intended to compete directly on performance and size with C, C++ or assembly language.

Please do not worry if you do not understand concepts listed above such as garbage collection. We will cover them later in this tutorial.

Below please post why C# is worth investing time and energy on.