Visual Studio

Visual Studio is a popular IDE from Microsoft that includes compilation, debugging, source control, and many other tools. In the CS department, most use Visual Studio is for C++ development, especially in CS 142.

This page contains some important information about versions of Visual Studio available for students in various contexts. The various versions can be downloaded here: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/

VS Code is deceptive because despite the name, it is NOT an IDE. Code is a simple text editor designed for coding and with many available extensions, like Atom. Also unlike the rest of the VS lineup, Code is open source and available on Linux. Code is installed on all open lab machines and can also be quickly installed on your own computer.

Community is the free edition of Visual Studio the IDE. However, it does have to be “licensed”. All that is required is to sign in with a Microsoft account within 30 days. You can use a personal Microsoft account or your BYU Microsoft account.

To log in with your BYU account, use the following credentials:

• Username: [Net ID]@byu.edu
• Password: your BYU Net ID password

When installing Community, it will ask you which components you want to install. As far as we know, all you'll need for CS 142 is “Desktop development with C++”.

On all open lab machines, there is a standardized Windows VM that is primarily deployed so Visual Studio is available. Unfortunately, the latest version we have a license for is 2015 and due to the sign in requirement on the Community edition, we are unable to deploy a newer version on the lab machines. Thus, for the time being, we're stuck on an old version of VS.