Starting with an empty project, I will show you how to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 to compile your C code without the usual bloating that the compiler adds automatically. This article will just feature C code, I may extend this blog entry for usage with C++ at a later point. In the empty workspace, create a new file called tinyexe.c with following content: #include <windows.h> void main() { MessageBoxA(0, "Hello", "world!