No sense to learn Microsoft Visual Studio in C/C++ courses

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

1. A lot people begin their C/C++ learning experience from Microsoft Visual Studio (MSV).
2. If using MSV, beginners will be frustrated by many concepts and warnings from the tool, not the language itself or their programs.
3. The goal is to learn a programming language rather than mastering MSV.
4. Development on Windows using Microsoft tool chain is not easy. Microsoft even has a certification for this, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) - if it is easy, why bother a certificate? Do you need a certificate to drink water?
5. So we just simply need an editor and a compiler, with optional debugger (for beginners, printing is the best debugging).
6. I really don't think many industry leaders are using Microsoft solutions in their R&D. For hardware gurus, like TI or ATMEL, their development environment is based on Eclipse, an IBM-initiated open-source IDE. For software gurus, you can just search how many of them are embracing open source solutions. Personally, I feel MSV is suitable for small companies with less than or equal to 25 people. If we are educating engineers for local small firms, fine, teach them MSV. If we are providing engineers for much bigger teams distributed all over the world, we'd better teach them how to play with big brothers.