I have installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional on both my desktop as well as on my laptop. I am preparing for my C# class that will begin on Monday. I find myself being amazed at the simplicity of such a massive application. On my desktop it is about 4.5GB installed, while on my laptop I installed it to take only about 1.7GB (just C#, nothing special).

I received my C# textbook today and read over the requirements for software. In addition to requiring an installation of the Microsoft C# IDE, I also have to have a SQL server. For now I am going with MS SQL Server 2005 Express, but I am likely to select something more robust for working with during the semester.

While I have taken many programming courses before, this is the first that has used the Microsoft IDE for anything. I am excited about working with it, and maybe learning how to make some things a little more graphical. Everything I have read relating to learning C# seems to be directed at reassuring me that it is an exciting programming language.