I am assuming you are using Windows 10 (but these instructions may also work for other versions of Windows).

Installing Visual Studio

1. Download and install the free Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2019 for Windows from the Visual Studio web site
2. Under Workloads, choose Desktop development with C++, which will check Visual C++ core desktop features and several optional components. Check also the Clang/C2 (experimental) optional component
3. Click the Individual components tab and, under Code tools, choose Git for Windows and GitHub extension for Visual Studio. Note that the installation will take a very long time!
4. Click Install to start the installation
5. Once it is downloaded, you will need to restart Windows
6. After starting VSC19 (my abbreviation for Visual Studio Community 2019), you will be asked to select a default configuration: choose Visual C++ here (we will not be using any other development environment for this project)

Creating a solution with one project

1. Start VSC19
2. Choose Create a new project (Console App), and name it strom in the next panel. I will refer to the folder where the strom project is saved as PROJECT_DIR. For me, PROJECT_DIR is simply the default: C:\Users\plewis\source\repos.