The install process likely will open your copy of Visual Studio Code, as shown in Figure 2. As you can see in the figure, a simple click of Install should start the installation of the C/C++ extension.įigure 1: The Marketplace listing for the C++ Extension You can get many of the details either from the marketplace or from the Microsoft C/C++ extension for VSCode documentation page.įigure 1 presents what is seen at this URL. The extension includes support for code formatting, auto-completion, debugging, and a lot more. There is an extension for Visual Code for C/C++ that can be installed from the Visual Studio Marketplace. In addition to being cross platform, Visual Studio Code also can support a number of programming languages, including JavaScript, Java, PHP, Python, Go, C#, and, as indicated by this article, C and C++.Įven though support for JavaScript, HTML, and a few other languages are included with the basic download, others require that you add an extension. The slideshow indicated some of the things that developers wanted, ranging from a lightweight editor to cross-platform support. Back in 2015, Codeguru did a slideshow, “ Top 10 Visual Studio Code How-To-Stories” that presented some of the key features of Visual Studio Code. More specifically, it targets Windows 7 or later, Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, and Mac OS 10.9 or later. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight editor for coding on Windows, Linux, or the MacOS. With the addition of the C/C++ extension to Visual Studio Code, you might have what is needed in a small, cross-platform editor. Although a full-blown version of Visual Studio, such as Visual Studio Community Edition, can be great tool for doing C and C++ coding, there are many times when it can be overkill. Having said that, they could be wrong! More importantly, people looking to learn C or C++ from ground zero might find many editors to be so overloaded with features that it distracts from learning the core language. C++ developers tend to be partial to their editors and might consider Visual Studio Code (VSCode) as a lightweight tool not worthy of their attention.

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