Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Overview of ScriptCS

What I found is that, ScriptCS (to be pronounced as Script-C-S) is a light weight open source development environment for using C# as scripting language.

ScriptCS removes the programmer’s dependency from Visual Studio. So one can write and execute the code without using Visual Studio at all. This means one can create a single ScriptCS file and execute it. There is no need to install .Net framework, IIS, etc... Also no cs-project is required to be created. It can be as simple as a single file (no additional DLLs). - This is cool.

So below are the components which enables programmers to write C# code without any project/Visual Studio:
1. Use Chocolatey (NuGet-based application/component installer) in powershell to install ScriptCS.
2. Install Nancy using NuGet Package manager. Nancy serves the web server role to run the apps built in ScriptCS.
3. ScriptCS uses "Roslyn" which is Microsoft's "Compiler as a Service" for compiling C# code. - This is really a revolutionary thought.

So these are all what is needed to run a C# application. There are some additional plug-ins available for syntax highlighting, debugging, etc. but these are non-mandate things.

My feeling is that it is like reinventing the wheel just to avoid Visual Studio. Although there are scenarios where tech evangelists are making use of ScriptCS and promoting it.