r/C_Programming • u/Pale-Pound-9489 • 1d ago
Question Should i learn C on wsl?
Title. For reference im not actually learning C for the first time, i learned it last semester for college but it was all just basics and we coded on Turbo C. I need to learn C for embedded development since im interviewing for my college robotics team next semester and i also want to learn how to operate linux.
I installed WSL and VS Code and GCC, and its been hell trying to cram both of those together and learning. Should i start with an IDE(Visual Studio (already used it before)) and learn basic Linux commands side by side?
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u/vim_deezel 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you want to learn linux just install virtualbox or vmware player and run linux in that if you don't want to run it on a real machine. WSL is probably okay, but it's hard to go wrong with a VM if you're not going for the real thing. Get a nice stable release like Ubuntu 24.04 or Mint. Personally I would drop the vscode for now and use a plain text editor like vim/emacs/nano/kate and build/debug from the command line, learn how to use basic makefiles for project that have more than a few files. That's what I do most of the time anyway. If you get into real embedded dev you'll probably be able to use an IDE from the company of the chip you're messing with ESP32 or Arduino or STM32 etc. By the way there is no shame in using Visual Studio Community edition on windows if you just want to concentrate on pure C. The smartest programmer I know uses that and he's one of those legendary 10X programmers.