Ok lets do another test. Lets say my visual studio is already running ... Now lets see you create a new project , add dependancies , add source and header files. In the meantime realize that you don't like the current music track playing in your media player so skip to next one , change your compile settings from Debug to Release
and copy some media files to your project folder...
I've would probably dringking my coffee watching my app running while you still typing you Danielle Steel novels...
I even win if VS already started and both have setup our project... since pressing a build button beats typing Compile.bat every time
Yes Visual studio is great if you can afford a powerful enough machine (its surprising how hurts waiting for autocompletion in medium range machines) and want to develop for Win/Xbox only using projects that provide binaries for your VS version (at this point you are better no longer using C++ but instead use C# and you will even save some time). End of the story.
The point is that when you target multiple platforms (especially on GameDevelopment like these days) and you are not using an Ide that is doing already that (says Unity or Eclipse+libGDX) I don't want to waste time setting up a VS project doing that. It is possible (VS has scripting and can use other compilers as well), but it is not scalable with VS.
Microsoft literally created a perfect Ide (well ipotetically, there are lot of things I dislike but assume it is perfect, bug free and performant), but the world is imperfect.
Assume you want to use VS to cross compile:
- Cross compilers are not good idea (they can't be boostrapped, well you could boostrap on Windows, then build the WindowToLinux cross compiler use that compiler for the standAlone Linuxcompiler, bootstrap it, use it to build the LinuxToWindows crosscompiler and use it to build the Windows only and the WindowToLinux and finally see if the binary is the same (proving there are no bugs in the cross-toolchain: however this was the Windows->Linux toolchain. In general X->Y is different from Y->X and you have serveral systems wich is exponential complexity just to be sure your toolchain is bugfree for at least a subset of the features, wich is unrealistic).
Of course if you have a language running in a VirtualMachine there's less effort in crosscompiling (but you are no longer using C++)
- Then discard the cross-compiler idea: VS is not avaialable on other platforms (it is even no longer available on
windows XP and VISTA 
, they are teaching good about maintenance cost infact )
- Then use Visual studio on windows and other compiler/ides on other platforms
- You still have to maintain multiple solutions/project files ( in example SDL2 development is going really slow because it's targetin EVERY existing build system O_O in one year still stick to v2.0.3 and every single toolchain has bugs that prevent building sometimes)
-with cmake you maintain 1 build system only and you get automatically VS support if you like it. (it even makes simpler when you target 1 platform, Cmake is not the MAKE EVERYTHING tool it has lots of downsides, it all depends "how you use it", most people still use it "the wrong way")
Mine solution is scalable, if you complain about typing "Compile.bat" (wich is by the way "co + TAB" because terminal has autocompletion) you can just use the cmake GUI (that has 1 button XD) so yeah, you win, running against children. I don't win, but I run against giants. Slowly most big C++ projects are switching to CMake, I even wanted to contribute that to irrlicht, but another user already did that
FLAME OFF
