Not a stupid question at all! It is just a code editor. They do have an IDE for compiling ( https://ide.atom.io ) but I haven’t used it so I’m not sure about it’s capabilities. Source: about 4 years ago

Gotcha! Although it’s no longer maintained, I’ve had no issues with the Atom IDE package. It contains a lot of the same features that you’d expect like code completion, code linting to check for errors before you compile, and the ability to build and run from the Atom editor. Source: over 4 years ago

There's a guide on the subreddit wiki on how to format code for display on reddit. When in doubt, you can also use GitHub Gist or Hastebin, though. Source: over 4 years ago

In future, use code formatting or put your code into hastebin.com and then post a link here. It will make it easier to read. Source: over 4 years ago

If you want to post a log, you'll have to generate one first (go to settings > logging and set both logging verbosities to 0-debug and 'log to file' to ON, then do whatever you need to do to create the offending behavior; that should make the log. Then, open the resulting log in a text editor and copy/paste the contents somewhere like hastebin.com and post a link to it here). Source: over 4 years ago

Close RetroArch, then navigate to your 'logs' folder in your RetroArch user directory (if you can't find it, open RetroArch and go to settings > directory and see where your 'logs' directory is located). You should see a text file there. Copy/paste its contents somewhere like hastebin.com and then post a link to it here and I/we can take a look. Source: almost 5 years ago

Can you give me the entire command history that got you to where you are now? If you can do that, make sure there is not personal information in the history, especially passwords. Look at the output of history. If it's large, try hastebin.com . Source: almost 5 years ago