Questions from an aspiring Dev.er

i gotta new nice laptop and i was gonna look into startin some dev ideas ive had and was jus wonderin
can i write programs for the dc in visual studios c++ or do i have to download cygwin and also if i realy get into it i need someon that is actually artistic mostly 2d stuff but thats more than i can do
my email is [email protected] if anyone is interested in in helpin and workin with me on these projects
thnx

The compiler in Visual Studio only compiles code for Windows, and only for x86 / x64. So to target the Dreamcast (KallistiOS, SH-4 ELF), you need to use GCC.

You can use Visual Studio as an IDE, if you like, but it's kind of a pain to set it up.

The easiest way is the DC Dev ISO, which comes with GCC / Cygwin / whatever, and Codeblock as an IDE.