In this chapter, we will set up the development environment. Now, since every time I use Windows, I feel like Windows is trying to undermine me at every turn, I’m more of a Linux guy. But if the idea of using Linux doesn’t sound too comfortable to you, feel free to use Windows, in which case Visual Studio IDE might be the easiest option. There are countless tutorials on how to get started with Visual Studio, so I won’t go into detail in this respect.
If you’ve never tried Linux before and you want to give it a shot, I’d recommend starting with Ubuntu distribution, which is really easy to get up and running. Regardless of the Linux distribution, you just have to make sure you have a working gcc, which is the compiler I’m going to be using throughout this series. Ubuntu comes with gcc already preinstalled, so you should be all set there. To see which gcc version you have installed on your system, open up a terminal and run gcc --version. We will be using the C++11 standard in this series, so any version of gcc from 4.7 up should do. Also, as I said, I’ll be using the gcc compiler in this series which means I might throw some terminal commands on you, but don’t let that scare you, it’s really simple. So without further ado, let’s jump right into it!