C/++/# Can I use Microsoft Visual Studio For coding C ?

If you do use GCC, consider using the editor SciTE. If you turn on line numbering it'll make debugging very easy because GCC has very good error messages when you use -Wall -Wextra -pedantic. I suppose the one challenge with GCC is you need to learn how to write a Makefile but that is not hard to do and once you have the file, you can always reuse it. (A Makefile is like the solution in Visual Studio. It references all the files of your project and compiles it in the correct order to produce the executable.)

 

I agree with @Mark44 that you can download and use it with no problems. It is a good super-IDE but just try to stay focused on your code and learn the extra IDE features with patience. Many years before I was using DevC++ and it was good enough for educational purposes as well as for building some open source software.- more recently I had installed a fork with C++11 support. There is a relatively new release at SourceForge.net .

I always liked to tinker with tool chains particularly of GCC, as a way to learn and set up things exactly the way I like. The same holds for maintaining and modifying if necessary the PATHs of Windows, as for a lot of other Windows OS things. But these don't come as suggestions without warnings. If you really like to do it this way - even independently of Microsoft Visual Studio, you have to study through resources, references and tutorials and do things in a safe way without putting anything at stake. If you're aiming to be a good programmer or software developer, I would also recommend to learn to program on a Linux distro besides Windows.

 

I installed VC++ because I wanted to see how easy it was to set up but I can't get it to work right either. For example, I tried to #include <stdio.h>; and it complains, but #include <cstdio>; doesn't.

@Mark44, can you elaborate on what settings need to change to enable C in the most compatible way possible? Thanks.

 

Assuming that you have installed the Visual C++ redistributable for Visual Studio 2017, you can create "New Project" > "Visual C++" > "Win32 Console Application" >"Next" > "Console Application" and "Empty Project". Now, click "Finish" and add a new source file from the relevant menu and give your source file name the .c extension, ignoring the options displayed. Hope this helps.

As for <cstdio>, it includes <stdio.h> and adds the associated names to the std namespace. Here's the relevant Microsoft web page.

 

Thanks. It was my fault in the end, I deselected a bunch of stuff in the installer, too many in fact, but adding them back left the solution in a confused state. I had to delete it and create a new solution and it's now working properly. I think I prefer Code::Blocks (I tried that after Arman mentioned it) because it's closer to how it is on Linux. The one difference I see is it uses g++ to link the executable like so: g++ -o myapp.exe main.o. But otherwise it's just like it is on Linux which should be very compatible with his class although from what I can tell, adding main.c to an empty project in MSVC is working fine as well.

@Mark44, there's no need to reply because I've got it working. It was my own fault in the end for trying to make the install smaller.

 

Just FYI, C coding is what MVS started with and it has never been left out. As for installations, I've installed many versions on several different machines and have never had the least bit of problem. It's really wonderful that MS now gives away the full version to individuals. I've paid out quite a bit for versions over the years (I've been using it from the beginning) and I was delighted when I found that it's now free.

 

I use Visual Studio desktop express 2015, which is the last version before Microsoft switched to the community version. You can start here to download an "older" version:

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads

Either way, you'll need to create a Microsoft account. If you're running Windows XP or XP X64, then the latest version of VS that will run on XP is Visual Studio C/C++ express 2010 (instead of desktop express). VS2010 is available as an ISO file. I don't think you need a Microsoft account to use VS2010.

Note that Microsoft's C compilers are essentially C89 compliant, not C99 or later. I'm not sure of the differences. Some C compilers allow variable length arrays (VLA), but even C++ standards don't support VLA, so I would avoid it. If you want a stack based array, you can use _alloca() with VS (it may be called alloca() for other compilers), but be aware if that if a stack based array is too large, you can get a stack overflow error.

 

Thinking of C again reminds me of when I learned to program using Turbo C++. The help pages were very good and I've liked C languages ever since. I particularly like how everything is pretty easy to do if you know what function to call. Functions like memset, memcopy, etc, don't seem to exist in other languages. And I like how pointers work like arrays. And you can pass by reference by using the address-of operator (&). And of course it has the switch statement that has made it into almost every language but not Python for some reason. So I do like C and this was a nice reminder, seeing if MSVC could work in a compatible way. So thanks.

 

Visual Studio is very good and stable. It installs easily. I would suggest you go with it if you are willing to learn to use it. You might need to get a book (used on Amazon, where you can see reviews of the books) to get familiar with its interface. I've used a bunch of those cygwin and other tools and much prefer Visual Studio.