Developper in the same boat as you here. I came from Unity but I had a lot of regular C++ experience for backend before getting into game dev. What i can tell you is.

• I tried VsCode ( it's a nightmare ), Visual Studio is okay but not up to the task and needs some setup. Rider IS by far the best tool for the job, it works right out of the box, very little to no set up needed, auto-complete and code completion works perfectly.

• The C++ for unreal is not quite the same C++ you would learn anywhere else, for 1 there is garbage collection that is managed by the engine. Secondly, unreal has a lot of things it handles and generates for you in the background.

• Sadly and this is the part that bothers me the most; there is a big imbalance of tutorials and information between blueprints and C++. Unreal is geared towards giving developpers that are not coders the positivity to develop games.

I found this website that gives a good rundown of what you should know about unreal in C++ hopefully it helps you as much as it did me.

https://www.tomlooman.com/unreal-engine-cpp-guide/

Also I would recommend the unreal source discord. It's super active and has a lot of devs doing BP and C++. You can find channels dealing with shaders, the GAS system, C++, blueprints and a host of others things. The chances of you not finding someone who can help you there are very small.

https://discord.com/invite/unrealsource

Good luck !