Advantages:
- better C++ language standard compliance
Non of there are advantages of non-MSVS nor they are disadvantages of MSVS, as they are easily achievable with the Microsoft compiler.
Microsoft's compiler still lags a bit behind on conformance issues, not much now, but some. There are some language features that can't be fully supported (or at all) until their compiler rejuvenation project is complete. They've written about it on their blog, but the basic problem is that for historical reasons the compiler took things from source to final representation as quickly as possible, so unlike most other compilers there's no intermediate form representation of the entire translation unit, and this makes a few of the new language features very difficult to achieve. Good progress is being made on the rejuvenation though, they announced their SSA optimizer recently, which is a first step in resolving the legacy problem. There is an interim sort of work around, though, that I'll speak to in a bit.
OP:
First, we need to settle on some terms -- A Compiler is the program that transforms your source code to machine code in an object file; notable examples are GCC, Clang, and Cl (Microsoft's compiler). An IDE is the tool many people use to write their source code, manage their projects, debug, and do other things; notable examples (for C++) are DevC++, XCode, and Visual Studio. You don't need an IDE to write code -- you can use any text editor you like, or other IDE-lite offerings -- as long as you're comfortable doing your compiling and linking from the command-line, and with debugging with stand-along tools like WinDBG or GDB. For running your builds, things like MAKE and MSBuild exist -- those allow you to build your program for various targets easily, from the command-line.
For an IDE, Visual Studio Community is probably your best bet right now -- As long as you select the C++ tools during install, everything should be set up. Other IDE options, IDE-lites, and text-editor-based workflows usually require a bit of extra setup.
For the compiler, there are a few things to address -- I'd wager that DevC++ in your instance is pointing to a GCC compiler, or possibly to Clang. Either of these have different command-line options and language support than Microsoft's compiler. If its the case that you'll need to use a compatible compiler for you course-work, you'll need to set them up. Possibly, one option is Microsoft's Clang/C2 compiler -- basically this is the Clang front-end, strapped to Microsoft's Code Generator; this gives you a GNU-style compiler (command-line options) that has Clang's level of language support, and creates object files, libraries, and DLLs that are compatible with programs written with Microsoft's normal toolchain. It might be enough for you to do your coursework with. I've used it myself to write code using Boost::Spirit::V3 (a template library that doesn't compile with Microsoft's toolchain).
If your school is a linux house, another good option around the corner is Bash on Ubuntu on Windows -- This is basically the entire Ubuntu user-land running on top of windows, and gives you a full Ubuntu command-line environment right out of the box -- its not "like" Ubuntu, it is Ubuntu -- You can run any Ubuntu binaries you get right from Apt, or you can compile and build from source, just the same as any Ubuntu machine. I believe that's being released to the public with the Windows Anniversary update on August 2nd (based on Ubuntu 16.04), but I'm not 100% certain; you can get it on the fast-ring now though (based on Ubuntu 14.04).
In any event, you'll always want to ensure that your program compiles and runs correctly using whatever environment your work is graded against. Even if you think your code should work and be portable, you don't want to start racking up zeros because you didn't test it.
