The primary objective of creating this spreadsheet program, as well as the class that it was programmed during, was to learn to how effectively design, manage, and maintain a large codebase. In all classes up to this point, I had received a new assignment each week, and each assignment was isolated from the others. This meant that the triumphs (and mistakes) of the previous week were discarded. In this class though, I was forced to work with the same code over and over again, learning what practices and design choices made programming successfully easier, as well as which should be avoided.

The easiest way to run any C# program is through Microsoft's C#/C++ IDE, Visual Studio. That is what this application was written in, and that is where the most success will be had. The link below leads to Microsoft's website, where you can download their free version of Visual Studio, Visual Studio Community. Make sure you download the C# Development Environment when configuring your download in the Visual Studio Installer.

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/

You'll also need git installed locally on your machine in order to clone this repo. The link below leads to their website. Any version should do.

https://git-scm.com/downloads

After installing Visual Studio, run the following commands to clone the repo locally on your machine. The project should be cloned into a folder located in your current working directory called "Spreadsheet". However, if you don't like the command line, you can also follow Visual Studio's built-in repo cloner and clone it that way.

git clone https://github.com/Hawkbawk/Spreadsheet

Then, simply open up Visual Studio, navigate to wherever you cloned the project, open it up and voila! You should be able to load up the solution and see all of the projects and files. To actually startup the GUI, just make sure Visual Studio is running the SpreadsheetGUI project, then hit the run button.

This spreadsheet application was written by both myself, Ryan Hawkins, and a fellow student at the University of Utah, Curtis Lin. The original application was written during the spring of 2019, in the CS 3500 Software Practice class at the University of Utah. The application was built up over the course of 7 to 8 weeks, with each week involving a new assignment that would allow us to eventually create a fully fledged spreadsheet program (although it will never compete with Excel, let alone Google Docs).