Hi, I'm the author of the article. It seems I've confused a lot of people here about what I mean with "C environment". My goal was not to "solve C/C++ dependency problems" as hinted by the use of a plain CMakeLists.txt and not even talking about the selected build environment. There are a million solutions out there and whatever people use is highly opinionated.

Docker vs. devcontainers: You got my point. It isn't about trying to force people to use devcontainers and vscode, it's about maintaining and sharing a development environment. You could just open a shell in this container and swap the base image out for whatever you need (also pointed out in the article). I myself also don't use vscode devcontainers but just exec into the running container and, e.g., use docker compose (or podman or whatever works best) :)

EDIT: The reason for showcasing devcontainers is that you get an IDE with code completion, format on save and all the other goodies "for free", whereas any plain docker or nix setup requires that you do this on your own. In my career, I've seen way too many people editing code in notepad or notepad++, making tons of mistakes that can be avoided by whatever IDE. I'm not saying vscode is best, I'm saying right now it is the easiest IDE to set up.