My recommendation is that you jump straight into writing code; start learning to program in C# as soon as possible, and learn what you need about your tools (Visual Studio) as you go along. Visual C# offers a lot of features and functionality, and until you're actually tackling a problem that uses a particular feature you probably won't get a great understanding of how to use it properly.

Likewise, learning some computer science is a good idea, but until such time as you can actually apply it to a working program you may have trouble truly understanding the material.


Write lots of code, make lots of mistakes, and spend the time to learn why things are going wrong. Change things about your example programs, see what happens, and try to understand why it happened. You should very quickly get comfortable with the basic usage of your tools, and from there you might want to think about learning what all the other options are.


Hope that helps!

Sure! These are different types of applications -- when you create a new project in Visual Studio, it will set a number of options on your behalf (as well as generating some basic boiler-plate code in some cases) based on the type of application you choose to create.

For now you should be fine to proceed with the simple explanation that "they are for making different types of programs".

Whatever resource you have chosen to learn C# should recommend an appropriate choice for you; you will most likely be starting off with either console application (text based, runs in the command window -- a good way to learn the basics without having to deal with all the work of creating a graphical user interface), or an empty project. The majority of other options listed there deal with different GUI technologies, and a class library is a way of sharing code between multiple projects. You'll learn more about the different options as you get to them, and I wouldn't worry too much about the specifics for now as long as you're able to get up and running with your beginner projects; if you're interested though, simply Googling the different names should bring up some information on each option, although you may not yet be ready to understand more technical explanations.

Hi,
If it helps i have started uploading game programming tutorials (c# and XNA) (written and video) aimed at beginners. They were written for my extra curricular ICT club.
www.defcom1.net
and
youtube

That's a bit scary, thanks i'll go and check that out

When it comes to learning Visual Studio, it's really one of those "find it when you need it" type exercises. THe nice part about the Express versions is they have done a pretty effective job of gutting the non-essential bits. There is an absolute ton of functionality in Visual Studio, but you really only need about 1% of it for game development. I would learn the projects settings area, how the debugger works and thats about it for now.


Do learn the debugger though, it will make your life a thousand times easier, and VS has one of the best debuggers in existence.