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Your work bench in Visual Studio Express to start your development adventure

I found this very useful page where the author explains in rich detail the Ultimate guide & FAQ to setting-up a Windows Phone development environment. Of course you could have gone yourself to the Microsoft download page, but it is always nice to have everything in one place, with all the instructions and this is that place. You are going to need Visual Studio 2013 and the Windows Phone 8.1 SDK (Software Developer Kit) and the Windows 8.1 SDK (if you also want to build Windows Store apps for Windows tablets, laptops and desktops). Of course if you want to run the Windows Phone emulator you will need to be running Windows 8.1 Pro as well, in which this technology it's only possible using the virtual machines magic of Hyper-V. It may sound complicated but this post at Age of Mobility (a great blog), will take you by the hand. A few years ago, in order to start programming and developing for Windows using Microsoft tools used to be an expensive proposition. You would need to buy Visual Studio (one of the best developing environments in the IT industry, hands down) which was actually expensive, but nowadays and for sometime now, Microsoft, using the open source 'business model', and just what the industry demanded, decided to give away these tools which are easily identified with an  "Express" suffix in their names. Thus, Visual Studio Express, Visual Basic Express, etc. I hope you get everything set-up, up and running. If you have any problems or questions, please, contact us.