Others have talked about how to learn the language but many people often find that hardest thing to do is to even compile their first C++ file. This is the "bui

Others have talked about how to learn the language but many people often find that hardest thing to do is to even compile their first C++ file. This is the "build system escalation policy" that I personally use, depending on what I need: 1: Experimental, throw-away code: online IDEs or Godbolt if I care about compiler output. You would be surprised how much mileage you can get out of a simple online IDE when you are just learning or exploring a new thing and don't care about preserving your work. 2: Single-file code or small multi-file projects with no dependencies (like exercises or code samples from a book): direct calls to clang++/g++ in the command prompt or a simple build.sh shell script when I have to build multiple files. Make is a fantastic tool for this so you can learn and use that instead. I would actually encourage beginners to play directly with the compiler and learn the basic flags though, but this is personal preference. 3a: Personal projects that pull in other dependencies (either system wide or libraries from github or other sources): Make or cmake would probably work here equally well. I actually prefer cmake for its find_package and external project functionality. Notice the jump in complexity from 2 to 3, this is something you have to deal with and eventually you will have to pick a build tool and learn it. 3b: After learning to use Bazel I have mostly migrated to it for all my personal projects, but there was an initial learning curve for sure (not worse than cmake though). 4: At work: Whatever your company/team/group uses, you will most likely have little input on this if the codebase is old and established. If you are in Windows you can use vanilla Visual Studio C++ (Community edition is free and has all the bells and whistles) for 1-3, or use Visual Studio + cmake (you can generate VS solution files from cmake).