The startup overhead of Visual Studio has decreased significantly over the years, by the way. When I worked on a C++ project with ~2 million lines of code, I also jump-started each day’s work by automatically running a batch script that did a code checkout and full rebuild of the product in the wee hours. I would keep the IDE open all day as I went through develop/test/debug cycles to avoid another startup delay. You will need to install these tools or use those already installed on your computer.For decades, when I got to work in the morning, I would start Microsoft Visual Studio (or one of its predecessors, such as Visual C++ or Visual InterDev), then brew tea and possibly attend a morning meeting while it went through its laborious startup. VS Code does not include a C/C++ or Fortran compiler or debugger. Support for other languages is supported via extensions. There is basic support for html, css, javascript and typescript out of the baox. VS Code is first and foremost an editor, and relies on command-line tools to do much of the development workflow. Visual Code Studio can be downloaded from the website. For project compilation, consisting of multiple files, the C/C++ Makefile Project extension can be used (and can be adapted for Fortran). The Code Runner extension allows execution of single files. C/C++ support for Visual Studio Code is provided by a Microsoft C/C++ extension to enable cross-platform C and C++ development on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, code refactoring, and embedded Git.

Visual Studio Code is a free source-code editor made by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and macOS.

C++ compiler for visual studio code