First, what is an IDE?
An IDE (integrated development environment) is a program environment where all your software development takes place. With this environment, you are able to do everything from writing, building, testing, and deploying code for your application.
Do I really need an IDE?
You don't have to use an IDE to build a .NET application. All that is required is that you have installed the .NET Framework, which is the infrastructure to build, deploy, and run your application using .NET technologies.
In the videos below, we'll go through the steps necessary to build a .NET application using a simple text editor like Notepad.
Visit https://dotnet.microsoft.com.
Click the Download button besides the Get Started button.
For our example, we are going to use the .NET 4.7.2 Framework. Select the Download .NET Framework Dev Pack under the .NET Framework 4.7.2 column.
Click Run to install the .NET Framework.
Now that we have the .NET Framework installed, let’s work with a small HelloWord console application. First, let’s download the DotNET_Developer repository. Once downloaded, open the folder and notice the HelloWorld folder.
Launch the Command Prompt in Windows
Change your directory to the following: cd C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\<wbr>Framework\v4*</wbr>
Run the following command: msbuild "C:\\DotNET_Developer-master\<wbr>HelloWorld\HelloWorld.sln" /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform="Any CPU"</wbr>
You have now just built your first .NET application. Now, let's run it.
Locate the HelloWorld directory in File Explorer
Double-click on HelloWorld.exe located in \HelloWorld\bin\Release
Fortunately, there weren't any errors in this build. What would happen if there were? Let's go back into the HelloWorld console application and create an error to see what happens.
Inside the HelloWorld folder, locate the Program.cs file and open it with Notepad.
Change the line Console.ReadKey() to Console.ReadThis()
Save
As you will see in the video below, we will make a change but have no idea if it works or not until we run the MSBuild command. So, again, we'll launch the Command Prompt and run through the same five steps we did above.
Let's recap!
We don't absolutely need an IDE, but if we're working without one:
We have to download the .NET Framework.
We have to know how to build the correct files and structure necessary in a .NET application.
We have to know C# and ASP.NET objects from memory.
We have to run MSBuild from the Command Prompt every time we want to see if a modification worked or not
We have to manually run the application (.exe).
