Chapter 2. Getting Started: 'Hello World'

It is a time-honored tradition to start a programming book with a "Hello World" program. In this chapter, we create, compile, and run a simple "Hello World" program written in C#. The analysis of this brief program will introduce key features of the C# language.

Example 2-1 illustrates the fundamental elements of a very elementary C# program.

Example 2-1. A simple "Hello World" program in C#

class Hello
{
    static void Main( )
    {
        // Use the system console object
        System.Console.WriteLine("Hello World");
    }
}

Compiling and running this code displays the words "Hello World" at the console. Let's take a closer look at this simple program.