Software Development (return to Home page)

Getting Started

Are you Ready for Online Learning?

Online Learning Readiness Questionaire
Do the tutorial at https://cfdev.senecacollege.ca/tl/forstudents/areyoureadyforonlinelearning/
Have you seen the student orientation web site yet? It is well worth your time.
Seneca’s Technical Requirements for Online Learning
- Use this online portal to purchase a Dell laptop at a 25 per cent discount on three pre-configured models.
- Regular or Power User models would work well for you in our school.

To be successful with workshops, assignments and homework for C programming and other courses, you will need

the Firefox browser, highly recommended for
- https://my.senecacollege.ca/ where your courses reside inside the Blackboard Learning Management System
- https://sdds.senecacollege.ca/ -- our School of Software Development and Data Science (SDDS) for announcements, events, and more.
a high speed Internet connection
a computer running Windows 10. Recommended minimum specs are: 8GB of RAM, i5 processor, 256GB storage, preferably an SSD
- Windows 10 is available as a free download to SSDDS students for those needing to upgrade or install. (details below)
- an Apple MacBook can run Windows 10 -- you do not necessarily need a PC
  - use BootCamp or a virtual machine (16 GB RAM recommended for virtual)
familiarity with Microsoft Office 365 apps: Outlook, Word, Teams, OneDrive, Excel, PowerPoint
for email, word processing, collaboration tools, cloud storage, and other office applications.
Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus is supplied by Seneca and used by everyone.
- our online access is at https://mySeneca.ca (sign on with your SenecaID@mySeneca.ca account)
- full feature set of Office 365 apps is available only when installed on your own computer (at no charge)
  - If you have older or other versions of Microsoft Office apps already installed, it is strongly recommended that you uninstall them before installing Office 365.
  - Sign on to Office 365 with your Seneca account
  - from the "Install Office" drop-down menu near the top right, select Office 365 apps.
Visual Studio IDE 2019 Community Edition, free download, see install details below
WinSCP for file transfer and PuTTY for terminal access to a Seneca server (details below)

Install programming tools

Visual Studio IDE

Our teaching and learning resources use Microsoft's "Visual Studio" which means the IDE version of Visual Studio

... for code-completion, code formatting, compiling, debugging, and assignment frameworks. We not only show how to code in a programming language, we demonstrate the practice of programming. And we do it using VS. More professional programmers use VS-IDE than any other Integrated Development Environment (IDE); unlike many pro tools, VS works for students, too.

Using Visual Studio (see below) will usually result in the best programming development experience unless your system is older or has relatively little memory.

Please note: "Visual Studio" (IDE) is a different product than "Visual Studio Code" or "Visual Studio for macOS", despite the naming similarities.

Want to use something other than Visual Studio IDE?

Yes, it is possible to use something other than Visual Studio IDE to do C programming. Students have been successful using Visual Studio Code (for Windows, macOS, or Linux). Whatever you use, it should have a built-in debugging utility. A debugger may preserve your sanity and/or the health of your computer, the window you tried to throw it through, or the safety of passers-by below if the window was open.

However, expect to be self-sufficient with respect to development tools and some aspects of support from your instructor -- everyone does not use the tools you do. Be prepared to translate anything referring to Visual Studio into your own tool's equivalents. Our courses may provide a Visual Studio project for an assignment; you will have to extract the code. Experienced programmers can probably manage this easily, but it will all cost you extra time.

Visual Studio IDE runs only in a Windows Operating System environment

Students are licensed to use Windows 10 OS and other software; go to the Seneca Software Center and click on "Students". Windows 10 Education includes features from Windows 10 Enterprise and is an upgrade from Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, or earlier versions. The upgrade is recommended.

Thinking of using Visual Studio Online (AKA Visual Studio Codespaces) ?

see this https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-developers-say-goodbye-to-cloud-based-dev-environment-visual-studio-codespaces/

Apple macOS

See these no charge options for Apple macOS users.

Linux

Linux gurus, you know what to do. Install a bootloader with Windows 10 OS installed. See above links to get a no charge, licensed copy of Windows 10.
If that does not work for you, one of the macOS options may work for you. (macOS is Linux with lipstick)

I have read down this far

https://www.onlinegdb.com/ -- easy to use online Code, Compile, Run, Debug for C / C++
Download source to your computer and Transfer / Compile / Run on matrix (see below).

Seneca provides an application streaming service called MyApps. Some software requires a connection through StudentVPN to access the licensing server. (VPN = Virtual Private Network) All other software on MyApps is Open Source -- don't bother with myApps and just install locally. There are reasons the MyApps option is this far down the list. A "cloudpaging player" client app must be loaded on your computer.

Some students have completed their programming course on Seneca's matrix server using vi, gcc, and gdb in a *nix (Unix / Linux) terminal environment.

How to install Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio
Narrated PPT slide show, video, PDF
Real Time download and installation video
Step-by-step documentation including download link.
- VS customization for SDDS

Hello World program

Visual Studio demonstration:

helloWorld.c -- open this page and copy the source code to be pasted into Visual Studio
VS Real Time demo video
Step-by-step documentation

Transfer / Compile / Run

First: install GlobalProtect VPN (Virtual Private Network). See the Students section.
- To use SSH/SFTP to Matrix -- the server used to submit and run acceptance testing on your C programs -- users must be connected to the Seneca VPN.
- macOS users might save time by reading this first: https://tech.wayne.edu/kb/security/wsu-virtual-private-network/500214
- You must reconnect/signon to the VPN every time you restart your computer.
Second: install a Secure SHell Telnet (SSH) client which is a terminal app to sign on and use a Unix/Linux server like Matrix.
- Windows -- install PuTTY using the MSI Package or Windows Terminal
- macOS -- use the built-in SSH Terminal (Finder, Go -> Utilities), or other options
- Linux -- use the preinstalled OpenSSHspan> terminal, or other options including PuTTY
Third: install a Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) GUI app for transferring files from your system to a server
- Windows -- install WinSCP. Its UI can launch PuTTY if it was previously installed.
- macOS / Linux / Windows -- install FileZilla for a cross-platform app very similar to WinSCP
After completing a simple "vanilla" install of the SSH and SFTP packages, important configuration settings are needed that will save you time.
see the Step-by-step documentation
or
run the maxtrix_transfer_compile_run demonstration video. It will show how to
- Transfer source code to Seneca's Matrix server using WinSCP
- Compile and run program on Matrix using PuTTY

If you have questions about getting started, send an email to your instructor – see Instructor Contacts / Faculty Info within the Computer Principles for Programmers (CP4P) course site at https://my.senecacollege.ca/ If you have questions about C, send an email to your programming instructor – see see your IPC144 or BTP100 course site at https://my.senecacollege.ca/ We have have software tools to share our screens and discuss issues in real time. Note that, like you, instructors have much to do getting ready for the new semester so their responses may be delayed. There is little that cannot be dealt with during the first week of classes.