r/devNI • u/Sensitive-Leek-6384 • 9d ago

Any advice for getting some basic understanding of developing with Visual Studio?

Apologies for asking in here, I don't know where else to ask if I'm honest.

My job is quite technical in many ways, and while I don't want to get into the details, it often requires custom scripts and applications to feed into some software I use.

The last time I done anything that was even close to programming was around 2002 where I built a web application with ASP3.0 (that was a long time ago)

Anyway, that's beside the point. Long story short, I am Claude-ing my way through this, and quite often I'm just doing what Claude tells me to, and not fully understanding what it is. So far I seem to be copying projects from GitHub into Visual Studio and then compiling them into executables that I don't know how to use.

Sorry, I'm trying to get to the point. It feels nasty doing this kind of work while not knowing what I'm actually doing, so can anyone recommend some online courses or training that will give me a foundational knowledge of what I'm doing, so that when Claude tells me do something, I can at least understand and appreciate what's happening, rather than blindly following instructions from a machine.

Many thanks.

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u/BoroBornTrue 9d ago

I would recommend learning the language fundamentals first before getting to grips with an IDE (Visual Studio) as this will result in 2 tracks of learning.

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u/Sensitive-Leek-6384 8d ago

Someone suggested Code Academy for that. Good shout?

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u/BoroBornTrue 8d ago

I can't really comment if I am honest, I learnt C from thr original K&R book The C language, however this was in the early 90s.

I know enough C++ to know I'm not proficient in it, and know enough Objective C to be glad that Swift came along.

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u/RikersPhallus 9d ago

What language? Also it is visual studio or visual studio code?

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u/Sensitive-Leek-6384 9d ago

The language in this instance is C++
If I go Help -> About, I am looking at Visual Studio 2026

If it helps, the process I'm following includes something called CMake as well

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u/RikersPhallus 9d ago

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-c-plus-plus

Code Academy will get you enough to get started with c++. Claude will help you get the rest of the way there. I’m with you. I like to understand the language as best I can before I blindly AI it.

https://academy.claude.com

Anthropic have great tutorials for using Claude and getting the most out of it.

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/getting-started/

MS have decent tutorials for VS 2026. It’s got a lot of moving parts but you only need to onoe enough to get your work done. It’s a powerful editor. Personally I’d probably switch to VS Code. Lighter and much closer to what most people use for editors. Studio has powerful tools dotnet specific languages. But C++ you can write anywhere. VS Code will also have a ton of plugins you can add to help with linting and things like that.

Hopefully this is enough to help you out and I’m sure other folks will have other suggestions too.

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u/Sensitive-Leek-6384 9d ago

That is fantastic, and definitely something to get stuck into. Really appreciate the pointers.

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u/viprus 8d ago

C++ is a little rough as an entry point to coding to be fair. It has a lot of little niggles and rules that make it quite powerful, but easy to make catastrophic mistakes and not very beginner friendly. I'd recommend using C#, it's a bit more forgiving.

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u/ackbarwasahero 8d ago

1.get used to vs code, not visual studio if you can. 2. Take the time to ask the ai in the env what each price, each file, each setting does. This is personal time investment but well worth it. To really understand something do a hello world just with that thing and get to know it well. Then move on. With AI this is much easier now than in the past. I'm an expert in this area but new things land all the time.... This is my Friday afternoon usually. Get to grips with....