Thread: Would like to try out sample programs

Hello,

I would like to build an own application, I have experience with C and C++ programming languages. I have just found a site (Ozeki C# VoIP SDK - A SIP SDK for software developers) that has lots of sample programs which are built upon an SDK called Ozeki VoIP SIP SDK. The issue I am having is that the sample programs are developed in C# which I do not have any experience so far. Could you tell me anything useful? How could I try out this software with out the proper knowledge? Or maybe I should stick to C and C++ until I learn enough about C#:

Hope you can give me good ideas. Thanks.

C# is very similar to C++. You should understand algorithms without any prior experience. Obviously, for better results you should learn the key differences between C++ and C# syntax. From what I remember these were these three things:

1) struct has a very special meaning, distinguishing it from class,
2) there are safe and unsafe pointers in C#,
3) there are classes and interfaces, no multiple inheritance.

Everything else can be more or less emulated in C++.

By the way, C# has garbage collector and very cool Java-like data structures.

These are good things. Now the bad thing.

C# is controlled by Microsoft. Despite there is Mono, the only sane implementation of C# compiler is made by Microsoft and its licence is kinda expensive. There is a crippled free version called Visual Studio Express. But I've got my copy of Visual Studio via student program for free for educational use.

I have done a little bit of coding in C#; I was impressed. Its is a bit like Java with C syntax. There are lots of good books and on-line tutorials available.

Visual Studio Express is a pretty good development environment; the main restriction is that it doesn't allow you create an installer for the software so if you ever want to distribute your application you will need to get the full version. It has good built-in help, including language help. And it is free.

Sorry for echoing comments made by others about C#, but I'm also here to praise it. Almost everyone I know (myself included) has been impressed with C#. It is reminiscent of Java, but still not all that dissimilar from C or C++, so if you are familiar with those, you will pick it up just fine. I recommend that you just dive right in, review some tutorials, and start coding in C#. You can read about the most fundamental differences between C# and C++ here.

likewise as earlier comments : when C# first came out i saw it as a cynical move to jump onto the OOP bandwagon, but now that i've been using it for a few years i've really come to like it - in ASP.NET i especially like the Ajax implementation and the graphical capabilities in .NET4.0