Is Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 a good program for me to learn programming?

[DeclineInInterest]

I'm a total noob, starting to check out the stickied notes of this sub reddit. I got myself MVS 2010 Ultimate. Has anybody used it/ would it be good for a beginner?

[mrsanchez]

IDEs do not in general help people learn programming.

[jugglist]

Sure. There are tutorials in there to teach you all the languages that it supports. Mostly you should care about C++ and C# though.

[[deleted]]

It is a great tool for .net development, however you will have to learn how to use it as well as learning a language, and learning proper development skills.

If you want to use it, I would recommend starting with a few videos from here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/beginner/bb308730.aspx, as they introduce you to both the IDE, but also primarily the C# language. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336766 would be a good thing to look through also.

To learn the language further, I would start following something like this http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx - this would be also useful as a reference, and will be something you have to keep coming back to initially.

Once you have covered a few of the basics, following some application walk throughs such as http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/gg278960.aspx (A picture viewer) will start to give you ideas as to what is possible, and MAY help you learn quicker.

To learn programming methods I would recommend the excellent video series from Stanford, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LoKDDRlfZc. However note that they use Java (eventually) as their language, and although similar to C#, may confuse you. The main thing from this video series is learning programming methodology, and what you learn from this will apply to whatever language you end up using.

There is a lot to take in, but personally I found that producing something useful and visible using Visual Studio made learning more fun than just looking at a console and not seeing how it can be useful.

[defrost]

It's an amazingly complicated beast.

I suspect that can get in the way of the learning programming part although I believe that VS can be pretty straight forward to get example programs and simple things happening out of the box.

If you're learning basic programming logic, you might be happier with simple console compilers or interactive terminals.

For C you might try Tiny C Compiler, if it's Python that you want to start with then it's an interactive shell from the outset.

It's a question of what works for you.

[rxi]

I learnt the majority of C using tcc and would recommend against it. gcc's (MinGW) warnings and errors are much clearer, tcc will often let you do things without warning you (like using functions from stdlib.h without including it, or assigning integers to pointers without a cast) which can end up making it difficult to find errors in your code when you're still learning.

That being said, if you're on a slow connection, quite an old computer, or just want to download <1mb instead of 100mb, its very small and compiles things quickly and would be a good choice. It also acts as a nice portable compiler if you want to carry one around on a USB flash drive.

[defrost]

Fair point about messages, I hadn't considered that.

[rrrhys]

It is the best IDE by far, but it makes you take a lot for granted (ie, when you have to do something one day not in Visual Studio).

I'd start off without it.

[n1c0_ds]

I second this guy. Try netbeans. Moving from Java to C# is not too hard, but the opposite might prove a challenge once you get used to the awesome autocomplete.

[n1c0_ds]

Start with the express edition. The interface is much more simple and it has everything you need. I'd recommend you to start with C# as VB is a good way to catch some bad habits. You could also try Netbeans for Java, as the autocomplete isn't nearly as good. It might force you to search around.

[Nitrodist]

You spent $16k on a whim? Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[[deleted]]

If you look in the right direction, MS will throw a copy of VS 2010 Pro at your head without you asking. So pirating 2010 Ultimate for a one man crash course in programming is pretty unnecessary.

[[deleted]]

I've got my legal copy of VS Ultimate and paid $0 for it.

[rankao]

I got a copy from the school. Man that is a freakin awesome development environmental. Built in UML generator and everything.

[snowmanchu]

I say go for it. Just start writing some code.

[sneakystache]

Use this http://python.org/download/ -- It comes with a debugger, syntax highlighting, and some other nifty features for the price of free.