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Comment by yokohummer7 | Hacker News Reader

Might be an off-topic, but recently I learned that Windows does come with a C# compiler. It's included in the .NET runtime, which is installed by default nowadays. This might be useful if you're extremely lazy to install any language implementation. It is quite amazing since even Ubuntu doesn't ship a C/C++ compiler by default.

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I learned this when my boss was wringing his hands over an Excel job that was too complicated to do comfortably in VBA. I'm not allowed to install anything on the computers because I'm a flunky technician.

I started poking around the C:\Windows directory to see if there was something that I could use, and I found C:\Windows\Windows.NET\

"Wait a second - C# is .NET, right?"

A hundred lines of C# later, I had a solution for my boss where you drag the CSV onto the program and it spits out another CSV. I would've liked to have the ability to grab an Excel file, but that requires installing another library... can't do it.

I'm surprised Ubuntu doesn't come with gcc.

You type in 'sudo apt-get install build-essentials' and you have it. I don't what the process on Windows these days but you used to have to find visual studio install media, install it, and reboot two or three times.

I don't what the process on Windows these days

1) Go to visualstudio.com

2) click Downloads

if you want the full IDE:

3) choose between downloading free version of a trial of the professional version

if you just want the command line tools

3) scroll down until you find C++ Build Tools and download that

4) double click the file you just downloaded.

5) Done

Yeah, visual studio now installs decently.

Uninstall or upgrade is still a nightmare, but installing it on a PC which has never had it isn't bad.

No more reboots?

Not that I can recall, at least not on Windows 10.

It'd be great to have it built-in but you can get https://chocolatey.org and MinGW pretty easily:

  iwr https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1 -UseBasicParsing | iex

restart prompt, then:

  choco install mingw

(no machine reboots, disclaimer: I work at MSR, nothing related to this)

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