Can't find "a.out" file in Virtual Studio 2017?

That "a.out" file is a Unix/Linux C/C++ convention. So is "terminal". The Windows and Visual Studio equivalent for "terminal" is the "Developer Command Prompt for VS 2017" in your Start menu, in the Visual Studio 2017 group. The Visual C++ compiler and linker will create a .exe file; and you can invoke it from the command line with something like:

cl hello.cpp /W4

Then run the hello.exe file with:

hello

That's rarely used these days, as Visual Studio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that includes an editor, compilers, automatic building and smart compiling (only source files where the source or one of the #include files has changed), a debugger and more.

If you want to follow a Unix lesson plan on a Windows PC, there are a couple of options:

1. MinGW (or one of the spinoffs like TDM-GCC or mingw-w64) will give you a GCC-compatible compiler and a terminal environment that looks like a Linux shell (called MSYS2).

2. Cygwin. A much bigger install, but you get a much more complete simulation of Unix/Linux.

3. Give up on the command line and install Code::Blocks with the bundled MinGW-style compiler. Last I looked, they included a TDM-GCC build of MinGW

nvm fixed it derp