Introducing the Try .NET Global Tool – interactive in-browser documentation and workshop creator

If you find yourself learning C# and .NET and come upon the "Run your first C# Program" documentation you may have noticed a "Try the code in your browser" button that lets you work through your first app entirely online, with no local installation! You're running C# and .NET in the browser! It's a great way to learn that is familiar to folks who learn JavaScript.

The language team at Microsoft wants to bring that easy on-ramp to everyone who wants to learn .NET.

The .NET Foundation has published a lot of free .NET presentations and workshops that you can use today to teach open source .NET to your friends, colleagues, or students. However these do encourage you to install a number of prerequisites and we believe that there might be an easier on-ramp to learning .NET.

Today we're announcing that on ramp - the Try .NET global tool!

Here's the experience. Once you have the .NET SDK - Pick the one that says you want to "Build Apps." Just get the "try" tool! Try it!

• Open a terminal/command prompt and type dotnet tool install --global dotnet-try

Now you can either navigate to an empty folder and type

dotnet try demo

or, even better, do this!

ACTION: Clone the samples repo with
git clone https://github.com/dotnet/try -b samples
then run
"dotnet try"
and that's it!

NOTE: Make sure you get the samples branch until we have more samples!

C:UsersscottDesktop> git clone https://github.com/dotnet/try -b samples

Cloning into 'try'...

C:UsersscottDesktop> cd .trySamples

C:UsersscottDesktoptrySamples [samples ≡]> dotnet try

Hosting environment: Production

Content root path: C:UsersscottDesktoptrySamples

Now listening on: http://localhost:5000

Now listening on: https://localhost:5001

Your browser will pop up and you're inside a local interactive workshop! Notice the URL? You're browsing your *.md files and the code inside is runnable. It's all local to you! You can put this on a USB key and learn offline or in disconnected scenarios which is great for folks in developing countries. Take workshops home and remix! Run an entire workshop in the browser and the setup instructions for the room is basically "get this repository" and type "dotnet try!"

This is not just a gentle on-ramp that teaches .NET without yet installing Visual Studio, but it also is a toolkit for you to light up your own Markdown.

Just add a code fence - you may already be doing this! Note the named --region there? It's not actually running the visible code in the Markdown...it's not enough! It's compiling your app and capturing the result of the named region in your source! You could even make an entire .NET interactive online book.

### Methods

A **method** is a block of code that implements some action. `ToUpper()` is a method you can invoke on a string, like the *name* variable. It will return the same string, converted to uppercase.

``` cs --region methods --source-file .myappProgram.cs --project .myappmyapp.csproj 

var name = "Friends";

Console.WriteLine($"Hello {name.ToUpper()}!");

```

And my app's code might look like:

using System;


namespace HelloWorld

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            #region methods

            var name = "Friends"

            Console.WriteLine($"Hello {name.ToUpper()}!");  

            #endregion

        }

    }

}

Make sense?

NOTE: Closing code fences ``` must be on a newline.

Hey you! YOU have some markdown or just a readme.md in your project! Can you light it up and make a workshop for folks to TRY your project?

Here I've typed "dotnet try verify" to validate my markdown and ensure my samples compile. Dotnet Try is both a runner and a creator's toolkit.

Today "dotnet try" uses .NET Core 2.1 but if you have .NET Core 3 installed you can explore the more complex C# samples here with even more interesting and sophisticated presentations. You'll note in the markdown the --session argument for the code fence allows for interesting scenarios where more than one editor runs in the context of one operation!

I'd love to see YOU create workshops with Try .NET. It's early days and this is an Alpha release but we think it's got a lot of promise. Try installing it and running it now and later head over to https://github.com/dotnet/try to file issues if you find something or have an idea.

Go install "dotnet try" locally now, and remember this is actively being developed so you can update it easily and often like this!

dotnet tool update -g dotnet-try

There's lots of ideas planned, as well as the ability to publish your local workshop as an online one with Blazor and WASM. Here's a live example.

Watch for an much more in-depth post from Maria from my team on Thursday on the .NET blog!

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