Introducing Development Tools and MonoDevelop

Summary

In this chapter, I introduced a comprehensive but user-friendly IDE in the form of MonoDevelop and touched on some of the other IDEs on the market such as Eclipse. These allow you to build enterprise-class applications but in a more user-friendly and productive environment. I also introduced some of the development tools provided as part of the core Mono environment. I encourage you to use these throughout the book, as it will improve your productivity, even though you can build all the applications presented throughout this book using the command-line tools.

The next two chapters will introduce the C# language, which is the default programming language used throughout this book and one of the most common in the industry. This will provide the foundation necessary to start building the book’s project application, the RSS aggregator.