How to Set Up C# on Mac OS

1. Install and Set Up C# on a Mac OS
2. Start a New Project in C# on Mac OS

This article will demonstrate the complete setup and basic syntax of the C# language on Mac OS.

Install and Set Up C# on a Mac OS

The following are the steps to install and set up C# on your Mac.

Start a New Project in C# on Mac OS

Open the Terminal found in Applications > Utilities on your Mac to start your first project. For example, write dotnet new console -o projectName on your Terminal to build a console application.

Then, open Visual Studio Code and navigate to the folder you defined in Terminal. Finally, open the Program.cs file from the left-hand Explorer to begin programming.

C# Syntax in Its Most Basic Form

When it comes to understanding fundamentals, C# is comparatively a simple language. It’s not as easy to learn as Python, but it’s also not as difficult as C++.

We’ll start with the most basic programming tasks: Showing text on the screen and accepting user input.

When you open the Program.cs file, you’ll get the following boilerplate code:

using System;

namespace projectName {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      Console.WriteLine("Hello World");
    }
  }
}

Output:

Hello World

Let’s experiment with a few lines of code to see what we can come up with.

Declare a variable data of string data type.

string data;

We need to show a message to ask something from the user. Let’s ask their name.

Console.WriteLine("What's your name?");

Then we need to retrieve the user’s input and store it to the data variable we defined. To do this, we utilize a function named Console.ReadLine() that accepts user input.

data = Console.ReadLine();

After that, it’s only a matter of displaying the information we’ve gathered on the screen.

Console.WriteLine("Hello " + data);

Because the user’s name was saved in the data variable, this line will output the static Hello with the name provided.

Complete code:

using System;

namespace ProjectName {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      string data;
      Console.WriteLine("What's your name?");
      data = Console.ReadLine();
      Console.WriteLine("Hello " + data);
    }
  }
}

Output:

What's your name?
Henry
Hello Henry