I’m trying to learn C++. I have a text I like, but I can’t learn anything computational unless I can put things into action. I also have zero budget for this kind of stuff. I tried to download Borland’s freebie, but all I got was a lot of code files after a hugely long download. I flushed them all and am ready to start over. Which one do the Dopers recommend?
For just learning, and doing simple stuff, you may want to take a look at DJGPP. It sounds like its DOS only though, and I’m not sure it has a debugger.
There might also be a windows port of EGCS and GDB which are a commonly used Unix* compiler and debugger, respectively.
There are also free development enviroments, if you’re willing to use Linux (Kdevelop, a Visual C++ clone) or BeOS (BeIDE?, based on Metrowerks’ IDE). These usually let you organize all your source files into a project, and let you set up options for how to build the project. Also, they’ve typically got an integrated debugger, which makes life much easier.
- (actually not just Unix, but most POSIX compliant systems like Linux, HP-UX, IRIX, BeOS, etc.)
djgpp is actually a port gcc and g++ to windows, the same guy that ported it also did the same for gdb. It runs in DOS. There is also a port of VIM to windows, which is an excellent editor for coding, in my opinion. It has syntax highlighting, and(at least on the unix version) you can specify words to highlight, very nice. Or, I’m sure there are good(free) Windows compilers or IDE’s out there. 
There’s also Bloodshed Dev C++ compiler. Get it at:
http://www.bloodshed.net
But I can’t seem to log on there, so there’s also:
http://www.softseek.com/Programming/C/Review_17755_index.html
Also find Free C/C++ compilers at:
http://www.allfreeware.com/compile_c.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/developercity/cc.html
Hope that helps.
Wow. Thanks.