I am helping s.o. out over mail to start with c#, and I would like to recommend VS express for it (from this link)
It’s not clear to me which version of .NET ships with it, and if there will be an SDK with a commandline compiler (cs.exe)..
I am using VS2008 and not too keen to test it all on my system.
tx!
The command line compiler is part of the standard .NET framework.
Express 2005 has been retired, AFAIK. The current C# express download is 2008 Express with Service Pack 1, which includes: