I'm near the end of a college course for C++. During class we focused exclusively on C++ programming in a linux environment. I've tried MS Visual Studio, but it seems like learning how to use something that complex is going to be more trouble than I want to deal with right now. Can someone recommend me a good and easy to learn/use C++ windows IDE? I use windows 10.

48 minutes ago, RidiculousName said:

I'm near the end of a college course for C++. During class we focused exclusively on C++ programming in a linux environment. I've tried MS Visual Studio, but it seems like learning how to use something that complex is going to be more trouble than I want to deal with right now. Can someone recommend me a good and easy to learn/use C++ windows IDE? I use windows 10.

Are you able to let us know what you find confusing about Visual Studio? It's very user friendly.

There are alternatives to Visual Studio:

https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-ide-cc-developers/oxygen3a

http://www.codeblocks.org/

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

In my personal opinion you should face the issues you're having with Visual Studio and get some help either from the community here, and/or your teacher (that's their job to make sure you understand what you're doing!). Many people are using Visual Studio, so this is not a good handicap to have.

If you have specific issues understanding something, just post your concerns so we can help you.

We never used Visual Studio and so I don't really have an excuse to ask my professor about it. Mostly, I'm just overwhelmed by the options. I don't know what 9/10ths of the options even mean, and it worries me because I may be in a situation where I am unable to get the IDE to work the way I want it. I am very new to C++ and I don't understand it very well. All we used in class was the linux "kate" editor, g++ on the command line, and make to compile a program from a makefile. I can't get Visual Studio to display a vertical line, or compile anything.

10 minutes ago, RidiculousName said:

We never used Visual Studio and so I don't really have an excuse to ask my professor about it. Mostly, I'm just overwhelmed by the options. I don't know what 9/10ths of the options even mean, and it worries me because I may be in a situation where I am unable to get the IDE to work the way I want it. I am very new to C++ and I don't understand it very well. All we used in class was the linux "kate" editor, g++ on the command line, and make to compile a program from a makefile. I can't get Visual Studio to display a vertical line, or compile anything.

I think you're over thinking the issue.  You should never worry about "problems" unless you're trying to do something for a reason and something isn't working or you don't understand it. There are many features in Visual Studio I never touch, so why worry about (x) features you will never use? All you need to do If you happen to be in a situation that requires you to use something within Visual Studio is visit https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/getting-started/ - Read up on the reference material: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/

10 minutes ago, RidiculousName said:

I can't get Visual Studio to display a vertical line, or compile anything.

Check the getting started link I gave. It's as simple as creating an empty console C++ project, adding a main.cpp to Source, and typing in the basic hello world code, then build and run.

Graphics will depend on what library you're using. That's another topic.

Maybe so, I will give Visual Studio another chance.

11 minutes ago, RidiculousName said:

Maybe so, I will give Visual Studio another chance.

If you're having a direct problem on how to do (x), just post here and someone can help you.  You cannot grow unless you're learning new things.  

Visual Studio has a large "surface", but most of it consists of commands that are either intuitive or irrelevant (if you need them, you know them).

The only parts that need study are simple and straightforward, and as suggested following some tutorial would be a good approach to learn about them:

• general operation (docking windows, options, extensions, NuGet)
• the basic structure of solutions, projects, references, project properties, source control
• the handful of commands and windows you'll repeatedly use to build, deploy and debug applications
• specialty features and tools, e.g. (possibly) building the application with CMake or even with Make and GCC

I agree Microsoft Visual Studio is complex, hard to learn, and confusing.  In fact, if you're coming from the command line, it gets in your way in ways that reduce your productivity over all.

If you want an IDE, I'd recommend Microsoft Visual Studio Code.  It has a lit of the fun features of MSVS, like code highlighting and GUI representation of the filesystem, but it's much simpler and comes between you and the computer a lot less.  Also, it runs on Linux and has some git integration.

14 hours ago, RidiculousName said:

I don't know what 9/10ths of the options even mean

Nobody knows.

QT Creator hasn't been mentioned yet, and it works great on linux as well as windows. Although you do have to spend a little time figuring out cmake build scripts, as it uses these instead of the pages and pages of options in Visual Studio.

I've also heard good things about VS code, although I don't know whether it does debugging.

When I started to learn C++ I found it easy to use linux terminals due to its simplicity. No IDE, only a terminal where I used g++, make and nano. But as my personal projects grow bigger the complexity of managing projects became more and more a hassle. I then started to learn how to use Visual Studio, which at that point started to make sense of having an IDE. In the end it just make your life easier and less manual labor for same result. That said, I would focus on learning on where to do project settings like: Compiler settings, Linker settings etc. found under "Project->Properties". That dialog is important one for C++. As you get more experience with VS you will learn about other bits and pieces. Good luck!