Opinions of free IDEs for a newb learning C? (Windows)

2    14 Jul 2015 06:08 by u/Insta_Mental

Just starting to learn how to program and decided to start with C. Looking at Eclipse, Dev-C++, and Microsoft Visual Studio Express at the moment. Any other resources or help is welcome.

Edit: Also, any learning/practice material regarding assembly language would be helpful

7 comments

4 u/Didymus 14 Jul 2015 06:50

Visual Studio is pretty standard. It's build to be broadly accessible. If I'm doing something as part of a larger project, I keep it in VS because it's easier to keep with Source Control, etc.

If I'm just working on something for me, I usually use SublimeText2/3, but I've been playing with Atom.io for funsies.

That said, I recommend Notepad++ for simple text manipulation if you're just getting started. It's solid and stable, and has a lot of basic features that are well implemented. (The Find/Find/Replace system is still the best that I've found.)

2 u/poky 14 Jul 2015 11:19

Are you just learning C or programming in general?

If C, others have suggested good choices.

If programming, don't use an IDE at first. I remember when I first switched to IDE, it felt like cheating. It could do all this things for me, but I already understood what's happening. I think that's the better road. Start with a simple text editor and terminal.

0 u/Insta_Mental [OP] 14 Jul 2015 18:25

I don't have any one language under my belt, I'm not up on best practices, and I haven't built anything substantial, but I am very familiar with coding and have done a lot of dabbling over the years.

Could you recommend a tutorial/guide that doesn't involve an IDE? The two that I'm working off of use an IDE.

EDIT: Nevermind, I remembered the distinction between compilers and IDEs, so I don't need any more tutorials (the bookmarks overfloweth).

2 u/BitterBiped 14 Jul 2015 17:14

Not a free text editor, but Sublime is the last editor you will ever need for any programming language... otherwise Notepad ++ is pretty damn decent free alternative.

0 u/Insta_Mental [OP] 14 Jul 2015 18:59

So, it sounds like I should get comfortable with MSVE and notepad++ as well as a standalone compiler. I'm leaning towards MinGW atm because I plan on getting back into Linux soon, and I'll probably try QtCreator with it. Other than that, I guess I need to spend my first dollar on Sublime.

Does anybody use Vim? Is it similar to Sublime at all? I'm kind of liking it so far, except for a few awkward keybindings that don't favor dvorak much.

Edit: Also if anyone knows any good online courses for trig and calc, feel free to share. They only taught up to algebra in my schools. :|