Headed and Headless

There are two basic types of Windows IoT Core applications: “headed” and “headless”.

“Headless” apps have no graphical user interface (GUI), and are said to run “in the background”. That is, they continue to run even when you start up a “headed” application. Also, they don’t depend on having a monitor attached to the system.

“Headed” applications have a GUI, so you need a display attached to your system in order to use them.

C-Sharp (C#)

Using Visual Studio, you can program your Raspberry Pi in C# or Visual Basic (or even C++). Microsoft has unified the API (Application Programmability Interface) between C# and Visual Basic, so it’s easy to switch between them. We’ll be using C# for this tutorial (just because we like it better, and hey, it’s our tutorial anyway!).

Instructions on the C# and Visual Basic programming languages are wayyy beyond the scope of this tutorial, so we’ll assume you already know the basics.

This guide was first published on Aug 03, 2016. It was last updated on Aug 03, 2016.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Jul 14, 2016.

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