Visual Studio requires windows 10?

Question

I'm using windows 7 and I'm trying to learn C# using Visual Studio. If I try to make a new project it asks for a minimum and target version(The only options are windows 10). Afterwards, it tells me I can't open this kind of project without updating to windows 10. I can't update to windows 10, how can I use Visual Studio 2017 to make and compile a C# project on my windows 7 os?

I have the universal windows platform development installed. I'm trying to create a "Blank App(Universal Windows)".

Answer 1

Rerun the Visual Studio 2017 installer (you can re-obtain it from here if you need to). Choose to modify your existing installation. Choose the ".NET Desktop Development" workload which will allow you to create console apps (best for playing with new programming languages), Windows forms, and WPF applications.

Once you've done that, launch Visual Studio 2017 and on the new project screen navigate to Templates > Visual C# > Windows Classic Desktop > Console App. Or search for "console".

You may also consider the ".NET Core cross-platform development" workload, which will let you create console applications that run on .NET Core instead of the full .NET Framework. This is newer and there's less documentation for it, but it's the future of .NET development.

Universal Windows Platform Development is for UWP apps , which require Windows 10.

Answer 2

1. Start the Visual Studio Installer
2. Select to Modify your current install.
3. Check the box for ".NET Desktop Development"
4. Click the "Modify" button

If you do not have the ".NET Desktop Development" component installed, you will not be able to create .NET applications that will run on previous versions of Windows.