Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio (VS) Code is a free popular code editor. It uses extensions that can be installed and managed within the editor to utilize external tools to extend its functionality. For example, with a few extensions, we can edit, build, compile, debug, and run a Geant4 application all within this single program. Even though it is developed by Microsoft, VS Code is cross-platform, it is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

If you cannot see the CMake icons in the bottom status bar in your VS code, please watch this YouTube videos to learn how to change their visibility.

Cursor, the AI-first Editor

Cursor is a branch of VS Code. It inherits the extension framework of CS Code, with more emphasize on AI assistance.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio is an IDE. It provides both an editor and all development tools that are needed. The following two videos walk you through the installation of it step by step.

I install Visual Studio just to compile my Geant4 code on Windows, nothing else. We can use it as an IDE to do everything in it as well, as demonstrated in the following video. However, I found it harder to use compared to the editors mentioned above. I won’t recommend this approach to new comers.