Chapter 1: The Problem

A User Account Control prompt appeared. Alex clicked .

Visual Studio 2019 Community opened, asking for a Microsoft account. Alex created a free one (no payment required). After signing in, the IDE appeared—complex, but Alex would learn it later.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64 Alex chose the Developer Command Prompt. Typed cl hello.cpp . And there it was: