Slashdot Mirror

Which is pathetic for the CC, honestly. Python's doable because it's *free* just like Java was then- and worse, you didn't need VS to do C++...

Dev C++
With MinGW or Cygwin, Eclipse

Sure, it didn't have some of the glitzy stuff MS was shovelling- but you could have pretty much done Windows or Cross-Platform C++ development back when Java was the big rage at the Community Colleges. And this doesn't even get into them doing Linux for all of it, including Java, Python, etc... They're guilty of some of the same mentality that spawned the notion that these idiot "bootcamps" are a good substitute for a discipline or vocational education. The problem isn't quite the thing Mike Rowe's fingering on this- but he's close enough to not disagree at all. They're guilty of trying to strip-mine all the students for all the money they can. Actually teach something? That's too much into our "BoM" on those grads we're pumping out.

Part of the reason you had problems getting a gig was that they saw the "cookie-cutter" Associate's degree and passed on that. You've nothing to offer except coding for them at that stage, regardless of whether that's true or not- because that's the only metric they've got to go off of. If you actually have ability and can pick up the Engineer's trade, you should get the rest of the BS degree you should get (which won't assure you the job...little will, honestly, unless you've got 2-3 decades of the bleeding edge, self-taught through the school of hard knocks...but it'll HELP, all the same...) and work on teaching yourself any gaps in anything they didn't teach you on your own. There's always something that they won't/don't teach you. You have to learn it on your own. Whether it's C++, OOD/OOA, or the like, you're going to have to be able to grab the ring yourself repeatedly to keep employed. The reason they passed on you is the AS degree- because of the "pathetic" I opined on at the beginning. They're not teaching a trade. They're honestly not teaching a good base to work with at most Community Colleges these days. They're teaching you the in-vogue stuff right then (You shouldn't be learning VS, you should be learning C++ which doesn't really and honestly give a tinker's damn where it's being implemented if you've done it right... You shouldn't be learning Java just because the College is too cheap to get proper Windows tools (which, again, is PATHETIC because the tools have been "there" within reach for nearly 20 years...). You shouldn't be learning Python because that's the big main big-deal in dynamic content websites in there with Java and PHP... You get the idea...) In all honesty, it wouldn't endear you to me if I were to hire help with either my Game Porting interest or my Agritech one. In the former, I'd need a self-starter that understands C and C++. They'd need to be adaptable to pick up Lua if they didn't already know it. They'd have to be able to debug code on X86, ARM, and MIPS. The requirements for the Agritech business I'm starting...are similar in nature, along with "getting" embedded coding. That's the kinds of jobs there's currently work for that's sustainable. An Associate's isn't going to help you there unless you can show you putz with that stuff already and can prove you might grow to fill those shoes in a 6-18 month timeframe being allowed to do it. The same goes for a "bootcamp".

Visual Studio, even the Express version, is a full-blown IDE

As is the IDE commonly used with MinGW.

and you have to buy the iphone running the iphone os(Unless you're condoning theft of physical property in addition to violating the Apple license, via Jailbreaking)

the difference after that is that if i want to develop software for the windows machine, i can visit
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
or
http://www.microsoft.com/express/

and get free software, develop and test it, and release it without paying anyone.

if i want to develop for the iphone, i got to pay a huge fee, develop it, test it, send it in to apple, wait a long time to see if they like the app, if they do and release it then yay for me.

SECOND
a cheap desktop is, about $500 1 time fee, maybe $800 for a better, non high end gaming machine. This may last you 3-5 years or so
An Iphone 3G G costs you, ehhh
$199 oringal cost
$60 a month for the At&t plan, minimum 2 year so minimum $1440, + 2 year dev, so $1638 for 2 years
If we make it last 3-5 years, same as that cheap desktop, we are looking at between $2457 and $4095

On the rare occasion I'm forced to write something for windows, I prefer DevC++. Even though I haven't seen or heard anything new about it in years, it was the first IDE I ever used, and my first experience with C/C++, so I'm still very fond of the interface. For all my real work (on Linux), I stick with vim.

Bloodshed. http://www.bloodshed.net/

Seems no one is giving serious answers so i guess i will be the only one

Freeware or open source software:
01. Firefox, http://www.getfirefox.com/
02. Winamp, http://www.winamp.com/
03. Miranda, http://www.miranda-im.org/
04. Media Player Classic, http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli
05. ffdshow, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm
06. CDBurnerXp Pro, http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
07. Daemon-tools, http://www.daemon-tools.cc/
08. uTorrent, http://www.utorrent.com/
09. XnView, http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.htm l
10. ExactAudioCopy, http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
11. Dev-C++, http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
12. 7-zip, http://www.7-zip.org/
13. Real Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm
14. QuickTime Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alte rnative.htm
15. Process Explorer, http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/processexplo rer.html
16. Uniform Server, http://www.uniformserver.com/
17. nLite, http://www.nliteos.com/ (sp+hotfix+driver slipstreaming and ability to remove almost anything from the windows installation disc, including wmp, ie, drivers, services, etc, you can get your windows install disc down to 180MB with a 70MB RAM footprint after boot).

Commercial/Shareware software.
01. NOD32, http://www.nod32.com/ - simply the best antivirus software out there
02. Cinema4D, http://www.maxoncomputer.com/ Great modelling/rendering program (also available for OS X)
03. mIRC, http://www.mirc.com/ not the best irc client, but it has a tiny memory footprint/feature ratio
04. Directory Opus, http://www.gpsoft.com.au/ replace Explorer with a far better file manager.
05. UltraEdit, http://www.ultraedit.com/ great editor for many textbased formats
06. Visual Studio, http://microsoft.com/
07. Nero Burning ROM. http://www.ahead.de/ my burning program of choice

by my estimates I can get stuff up and running in half the time under Linux with it's standard socket interface. Basically, the Windows tools are designed to be good at cranking out MDI applications; once you attempt to move outside Microsoft's standard application model, getting anything to work properly becomes like pulling teeth.

It is nice that you bring those point as just yesterday I tried to "migrate" a program from Windows to Linux. It is nothing too fancy, just a SDL+OpenGL small game. I have been developing the game using the open and free DevCpp software for windows which is *really* easy to use (DevPaks are excellent).

To move into Linux I decided to use KDevelop as it seemed to be the most full featured developing IDE and from what I remember from the time I had programmed in Linux before it was the most complete one (against Anjuta for example).

Now, where do I start, first, I had to install 4 RPMs:
- libmesa
- libmesa-devel (header files)
- libSDL
- libSDL-devel (header files)

Nothing too fancy, easly done with Mandriva package manager. After that I copied the CPP, H files from the NTFS partition to my ~/ and created a new project with KDE, ok, everything seemed cool as I created a "C++ SDL project".

After getting rid of the default main file (an example on SDL initialization, quite nice detail if you ask me) started trying to add my files to the project, after wandering around for some time at the IDE, I found there was no place to "ADD FILES TO PROJECT" or something similar, instead, after something like 15 minutes I found that I needed to add files to the automake manager sub window.
Nice, I started adding files but while doing this I encountered the first *fatal* bug, suddenly if I right clicked one of the files to get the context menu (to remove the file or something) the KDevelop environment just crashed, and the "send bug report" appeared (I do not have internet at home so I could not submit it... pitty).

So, after initializing the program again I encountered another bug, the project was just unusable, in some way the previous bug destoryed the project file... so I had to create the project again BUT had to use another directory (and name of the project) as the name I used previously was already there (with the files of the previous dead project).

Nice, I made a new project, I moved my source files and added all of them (being careful to not right click!!!). After that I compiled the project and started the process of refining some specific details about Windows at my source. After some time the program *almost* compiled but it said that it could find any of the mesaGL referenced functions and I knew that it was because I had not linked the -lGL libraries.

Now, this was my greatest frustration. I went to the Project menu and looked in all the options to see where something similar to "linker options" would appear.. mmm. the most similar thing was under the Project/Project_Options/Configure_Options option as Linker_Flags, I added the -lGL and tried to compile again without success...

At this time I was kind of annoyed but I thought that some !"$"£@ flag could not win against me and I was determined to do it, so I went to the console and made a grep for the -lSDL (the flag that was added by the project wizzard). It seemed that the flag was at the .kedevelop project file so I edit it and added my -lGL flag manually.

I reopened the project and tried to compile *again* without success... then something *brilliant* occurred to me, what is it that all the OS people say (including me hehe)? RTFM!! so I went straight to the HELP menu and selected the "kdevelop handbook", the first time I did it the only answer I got was "Manual was not found, perhaps you did not install the documentation"... so I went back again to the Mandriva Package manager and lookend & installed Y

If you don't need a GUI editor, Dev-Cpp is a free package that includes an IDE and C/C++ compiler for Windows.

http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

I've gone down this route myself and been very happy. I use Delphi daily, I've written some large VB apps, but wxWidgets was by far the best tool for rapid development for me. Dev-cpp from http://www.bloodshed.net/ was for me the fastest way to get a working C++ compiler up and running, and they have wxWidgets available as an installable module. You can find the latest version on their Community DevPack server.

Fortunately, there's MinGW, various IDE's, and a bunch of
Open source
libraries available online.

Or if you don't want any bullshit, and just want to get work done with smallest possible foot print, FLTK. If you're on Win32, download Dev-Cpp and use fltk2.

http://fltk.org/

http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

I have migrated from my legally bought Visual Studio to this bare-bones platform, and I am an order of magnitude more productive.

With FLTK, I wrote a 3D voice signal visualization and analysis software in three weeks. With native OpenGL. This stuff is what wet dreams are made of. Highly recommended.

Come to that, there's the Bloodshed C compiler http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html , also free. "Fancy" IDE and all! But that's still small potatoes compared to the support for some 10-15 compilers/interpretters shipping with major Linux distros (let's see, I have C, C++, objective C, Lisp, CLisp, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java (the gcj? I think I recall), Tcl/Tk, awk, sed, POVray scene description language, assembly (in a couple of flavors)...

Productivity:

Graphics:

Media:

Internet:

Survival Kit:

Development:

Yes, it wouldn't do any harm to brush up on your C++ skills. If you don't have a C++ compiler yet, get Dev-C++ http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

Then try to finish at least one game. It doesn't matter how simple it is. If you then want to concentrate on design, instead of the nitty-gritty details, you might want to try http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/

For 3D, 3DGamestudio http://www.conitec.net/a4info.htm is a cheap, decent, all-around game authoring system. You can cobble together a quick FPS and if you put more time into it, a good RPG.

The two I just mentioned are for the windows platform, btw.

If you really want to start with a good (cross-platform) 3D engine, Irrlicht http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ is a good open-source one. It works with Dev-C++.

The important thing is to get one game out.

If you really did Windows programming in 1995, try using dev-cpp from http://www.bloodshed.net/. It operates on a subset of the Win32 api and has reasonable default templates.

Widgets have nothing to do with it.

There's also MusE, and something new called Wired.

C++ is not supposed to be portable. Don't expect the Deitel examples to always work if they are designed for a Windows enviornment.

I don't know of any Unix / Linux specific C / C++ book, but considering that C was originally meant to be used in a Unix environment, you should have no trouble using it in a Linux enviornment if the book is a traditional C / C++ Unix book and isn't clobbered with Windows junk. "The C Programming Language", by Kernighan and Ritchie comes to mind.

Your instructor sounds like he is unfamiliar with your school's software. This is unfortunate, because that software costs money and it is a shame to have it go to waste.

A good, free, Windows IDE is Bloodshed Dev-C++, which is basically the GNU C Compiler bundled with a GUI. It's quite nice, and it's free. On Linux, well, I just use a text editor and a terminal. But there are IDEs out there if that's your inclination.

Here is a link to the Dev-C++ page: http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

Most people don't develop software, and so considering the cost of Xcode makes about as much sense as itemizing each background image that comes with the respective operating systems in question, in order to determine the value to the consumer when they're going to download nudie pictures or anime from the Internet and use that instead.

But if they were developing software, I don't know, they might use
one
of the
numereous options available to them for free.

And as for video editing and music editing, I don't have any interest in either. And if my friend wanted me to do anything complicated involving either, I would probably not be qualified to do so anyway. Now if it were simple video editing, there are options.

I doubt very much you would want to pay the premium of a bundled Mathematica with your computer in the off-chance you think you might like to take up mathematics. Nor a bundled Minitab in case you decide you missed your calling as a statistician. But point out that Macs are a poor price-performance competitor and some Mac user will itemize bundled software they don't really use, vacuous claims about the superiority of the manufactured parts, or introduce vague notions regarding aesthetics.

Personally I can't see why anyone with any taste would use Aqua, or programs with ugly brushed metal themes. I don't really see why anyone with any taste would buy a bunch of white objects that will start off by not fitting in with their surroundings, and end up developing a dull tinge as they age. But it isn't really about aesthetics, it's about being superior to others by being in a higher-priced minority, so we can just forego any further discussion about style.

Yes, I realize that KDevelop + QT Designer (or whatever it's called) is to many people a much more attractive development environment than the GNOME alternative.

Why didn't you mention them by name? Anjuta and Glade. Neither program is as intuitive as its KDE counterpart, but a quick stroll through a tutorial or two will get you on the right track. The problem is that for a long time the GTK/Gnome tools for Win32 were terrible, and porting an application built with GTK was a major chore. It's much better now. GTK-- on Debian unstable is version 2.4.8 and on Windows it's 2.4.8

Even so, just compiling your code on Win32 is a PITA. Dev C++ has made it easier to get a functional mingw build environment (at least for pure GTK or wxWidgets) but the last time I tried it there was no support for importing Kdevelop/Anjuta projects...you had to go through manually and import individual source files into a new project.

You forgot about Fltk http://www.fltk.org/ for your interfaces needs (free and portable) and Dev-C++ from Bloodshed software http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html which is a great IDE for windows (which is also free!). Of course, you don't get all the fonctionnality of Visual C++ in one package, but it does the job without problems (at least for me :)

If I had mod points I mod you down into oblivion. Not only you're completely incompetent as a release engineer in the FreeBSD team, but you don't know shit about Windows development tools. Dev-Cpp is a perfect development environment for Windows and guess what, it's free!

Now go and fix the usb keyboard install bug in FreeBSD and leave the Win32 talk to people who actually know what they're talking about.

Glass, total pwnage

Try Dev C++, http://www.bloodshed.net/ it's available under the GPL and continues to improve.

I didn't claim they could be used natively in windows. The great-grand-parent didn't ask for a windows solution & said that anjuta was worth a try.

I think they can be used in cygwin. They can also be found in numerous bootable CDs. Cross compilation is possible. Last time I checked, Microsoft's products couldn't do this. Isn't it a "definite disadvantage" that Visual Studio can't be used for Linux development AT ALL?

Developing in linux offers many, many advantages over developing in windows. One being that the non-commercial use of the superior intel c++ and fortran compilers are free. A lot of other better tools are also more accessible--MSVS relies on source safe rather than CVS or subversion, for instance.

If you want a native windows C++ IDE, try Dev-C++.

Here are a couple links to some great free C++ IDEs which have builds available for Win32 and for Linux. Both environments rely on GCC for compilation and they are perfect for students.

Dev C++
MinGW Developer Studio

Most people have Word; it comes with many computers sold. And Mac OS until recently had no compiler included (you had to get CodeWarrior or the like, which was as expensive as Visual Studio); now it includes GCC, which is available for Windows with an optional GUI, both Free, though MS won't include open-source stuff with Windows. And Mac OS X's Developer Tools comes on a separate disc (though it comes in the OS box).

And do you want GUI or not? Half your post implies you need command-line, not GUI; the other half, the reverse.

In all fairness, I don't think that your second and fourth points are very valid.

Yes, WinXP broke a lot of compatibility with DOS and older Windows apps, and in my opinion, it was far overdue; supporting the legacy APIs was hurting Windows. To put things in perspective, the majority of the software that it broke compatibility with was written for Win95 or earlier; the Linux kernel was still in 1.x in 95, and I doubt that you could find any Linux program compiled for a 1.x kernel that would run on a modern system.

Also, saying that you can't program without spending cash on a compiler and libraries is just wrong. I am familiar with at least two free C++ compilers that run under Windows, DJGPP and MinGW. Dev-C++ is also a fairly popular development environment. You don't even have to use Microsoft's libraries, if you don't want to; while I believe the DirectX SDK can be downloaded for free or bought on CD for a nominal fee, you could, alternatively, use SDL or wxWidgets or any number of other graphical libraries.

• Putty - A free (GPL) SSH terminal emulator
• Winzip - Yeah, you know what this is
• VLC - Free media player
• OpenOffice.org - I should stop doing these descriptions, its not as if youve heard of these things before!
• GIMP for windows - Yup, the infernal/eternal image editor
• Sharpdevelop - Free (GPL) .net IDE, requires the .net framework and SDK
• Bloodshed Dev-C++ - Excellent free (GPL) C and C++ IDE, using the Windows GCC port
• Thunderbird - Mail client
• Firefox - Web browser
• Adobe Acrobat Reader - PDF Reader
• PDFcreator - GPL PDF print driver for windows
• MessengerPro (Clickatell) - Non free SMS sender for windows, company does good bulk buy sms rates, i buy 500 at a time for less than $5
• Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot SS - For the essentials in life
• Topstyle - Free version of the excellent CSS editor for webdevelopment, if anyone knows a good free alternative, im open to suggestions :)
• SmartFTP - Great free for personal use FTP client, not found a better one yet! (I have, Filezilla it is excellent AND fully GPL, none of this non free shit, bub. :-) )
• MySQL-Front - Old version of the MySQL windows front end, much much better than the new one you pay for. Source isnt open and the old developer discontinued development, possibly one of the best advertisements for why OSS is good :(
• Editplus - Possibly the best editor ive found, not free im afraid, costs around $25

VLC -, like you mentioned, Free media player is a great media player, it blew me away. Better then Window's media player, and I know that my porno viewing habits are not going straight to Bill Gates.

One you didn't mention is Filezilla which is a good GPL ftp program instead of SmartFTP if you want to try another one out. (I must confess I use LeechFTP since I haven't gotten use to Filezilla just yet, although if you are into hosting files Filezilla is even better).

There's a decent free IDE available called Dev-C++ for windows, it comes with mingw32 ofcourse.

You could try Dev-C++

or DevC++ if you need an IDE like VS.

Is anyone aware of OSS products similar to this?

Gnome/GTK+ is available for Win32, although not as neatly packaged as for X11. Dropline has some Win32 packages that are easy to install. Tor Lillqvist has created some packages that a useful in conjunction with the MingGW environment. I believe that there is a Cygwin Project as well (see here but I can't testify as to its status. If you need an IDE, the Bloodshed IDE, Dev-C++, can download GTK+ packages for use within the IDE, and can help you automate integrating GTK+ in your apps. See here for information on the IDE.

Gnome/GTK+ is GPL'd and truly "free software". wxWindows is another option, but someone has already posted regarding that, so I'll leave it to you to investigate your options and decide which you like best.

ER, sorry. That should be bloodshed.net ...

Come on guys, you can't survivie without a compiler.

• CygWin. The Linux-like environment for Windows.
  Mozilla. Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
  Firebird. for FAST browsing.
  WS FTP Light. A FREE, FTP client that works great.
  Filezilla. which is TRULY free and does sftp as well.
  PuTTY. a free SSH client for Windows.
  TTSSH. is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.
  iXplorer. freeware secure FTP client
  VNC hello!? remote controll software.
  Tight VNClike the original, only FAST.
  GNU-EMacs for Windows. just trust me ;).
  Dev-C++a free C++ compiler for those who can't afford VS.
  NetHack. as someone here said, you MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
  Free-AV.free Anti-Virus software for Windows, (mandatory these days). or
  AVG Free edition. another free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
  Zonealarm. my favorite Personal Firewall,, really!. or
  Kerio. another firewall that some seem to like. or
  Sygate. yet another firewall. whatever floats your boat.
  Boingo. to see where the closest hotspot is, hehe.
  OpenOffice 1.1 the Microsoft Office KILLER :) {really!}
  Winamp 2.x for audio/video usage in Windows, stay away from the new one :).
  Mark's Adding Machine is much better than the Windows calculator.
  SpyBot Search & Destroy The best Ad-ware / Spyware removal tool we've found, "IE is unusable without".
  Ad-Aware another spy-ware app "alas poor Windoze."
  Trillian a favorite IM, since we're all chatters @ heart. or
  GAIM since trillian hogs resources, "bad piggy!".
  Gimp image creation/editing. Who needs Photoshop anyway?
  EnZip freeware Zip Utility, Stop nagging you WinZip!!
  Iview is a great little image viewer. or
  Irfanviewone of the best image viewer out there for Windows.
  Audacity is a great little sound editor.
  Virtual Dub. a great video editor.
  cDex gotta rip those cd's for the RIAA!
  MAME for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. and finally
  XPantiSPY since XP is E-V-I-L.

And FINALLY, don't trust me! Trust the experts;

Go to the Pricelessware site maintained by the alt.comp.freeware Usenet group.
The

*cough*

Let me give you a hand here in understanding some of the differences between your list and his:

This is what Dev-C++ looks like.

And this is what gcc looks like.

Here is my top ten list (in no particular order) for Windows. I'll let everyone argue about the Linux tools.
CygWin the Linux-like environment for Windows.
Mozilla naturally.... Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
WS FTP Light a FREE, FTP client that works great.
PuTTY a free SSH client for Windows.
VNC remote controll software, NOTE: the location is no longer on the ATT Labs UK site.
GNU-EMacs for Windows. I usually install it, but use Vi more.
Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler. I use VC++ 6.0, but this is free, and I think it's pretty good.
NetHack You MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
Free-AV free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
Boingo to see where the closest hotspot is. (free) you don't need the service.

I was recently doing something similar but lightweight, moving some code between Linux, OS X and Windows. The way that worked for me was to just use a central CVS repository then check out on to the relevant platforms. Three Windows "killer apps" in this were: cygwin, which doesn't suck nearly as much as it used to and has a way handy gui package installer; Tortoise CVS which is how CVS should be done; and Dev C++ which, if nothing else, is the most convenient way of getting gcc, free software Win32 API's and all the other dependencies up and going on Windows.

Worked for me :)

Dave

As I am generally adverse to Microsoft and every ultra-bloated software package that comes out of the unholy lair in Redmond, WA, I had to find myself a semi-useful, similar alternative to VC++ for my C++ programming class this semester. What I found is Dev-C++ from Bloodshed Software. From their website regarding Dev-C++'s features:

Bloodshed Dev-C++ is a full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the C/C++ programming language. It uses Mingw port of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) as it's compiler. Dev-C++ can also be used in combination with Cygwin or any other GCC based compiler.

Features are :

- Support GCC-based compilers
- Integrated debugging (using GDB)
- Project Manager
- Customizable syntax highlighting editor
- Class Browser
- Code Completion
- Function listing
- Profiling support
- Quickly create Windows, console, static libraries and DLLs
- Support of templates for creating your own project types
- Makefile creation
- Edit and compile Resource files
- Tool Manager
- Print support
- Find and replace facilities
- CVS support

Source code : Delphi 6 Source code of Dev-C++ is available for free under the GNU General Public License (GPL)

I've used it for two simple labs so far, and while it may not be as "full-featured" as VC++, it's also simple to set up and use without a fuss, AND it still looks and feels to this novice programmer, just like VC++. (minus the horror of "Microsoft" bloat as far as I can tell) In fact, using WinXP at the school computer labs with VC++ 6.0 has given me compile errors and random memory overflow problems (they have new computers, it's not bad hardware) whereas Dev-C++ has not given me any problems building, compiling, and executing my programs. (Yes, I had random errors with VC++ that were NOT related to my program as I restarted the school computer and it compiled just fine with 0 changes in my code - go figure)

Microsoft makes available a free version of their C++ compiler whose only limitation is limited support for the advanced optimisation features in the version which comes with Visual C++ (the expensive IDE)

Sadly, it can be hard to locate the free version of the compiler. Last I cared, you could get it with the .NET Framework SDK, but I don't know if that's available anymore now that Visual Studio.NET is available.

Of course, this is just the compiler. You have to get your own text editor or IDE. Alternatively, GCC has been ported to Windows, so you can use Microsoft's freely-available (as in beer) header files with Win32 GCC to produce Windows executables. See Bloodshed Dev-C++ for an example of a free (if slighly quirky) IDE for Windows based around GCC.

The author claimed that it wasn't a QBasic application, but the error messages when it crashes tell a different story.

The QBasic integrated editor was a real joy, and it's hard to find a good, lightweight equal. Python is too big, C++ lacks the "fun" factor...

Lua with the SciTE editor comes close, if only it had builtin help.

I only stopped using QBasic after repeatedly running into the 32K memory barrier. I moved to Euphoria, a nice interpreted language. I missed the QBasic editor that I ended up writing a clone for Euphoria.

Heck, QBasic left such a mark that I ended up writing a Basic interpreter of my own.

I am a teacher in a public Middle school in Carrollton, TX. I started a robotics club this year in order teach students robotics design, programming, teamwork and other skills. We use Lego Mindstorms and Handyboards in our club and program them in C, specifically Interactive C and Not Quite C (NQC). We also have one system running Linux as both IC and NQC are available for Linux.

My administration is very supportive of the club, providing money and other suppport through the year. The main difficulties in the club was raising money for the equipment and to pay the fee for the Botball competition we entered.

I applied for a grant with our local Educational Foundation and received $1,000 to fund the initital purchase of equipment. Your school district probably has an educational foundation that provides grants to teachers and students. Find a willing faculty member to sponsor your club and help you find funding and support.

Before I received that grant I began teaching the students C using a free Windows compiler I found on the net. It was perfect as it allowed the students to write Windows console applications without worrying about the code over head of a real Windows application. You can find the Bloodshed complier here

After we got our initial equipment I searched the net for grants available to public school teachers to fund technology applications. I applied for an $8,500 grant from The Verizon Foundation. This money will be used to pay our Botball entry fees for next year, and buy more advanced equipment for the students returning next year. I have had so much interest in the robotics club that I will probably have three clubs next year.

First off this guy is a Unix evangelist. No bias here. Second in the article the author makes a point that each new school desktop cost $2100 plus $213 with the software for office at bulk discount rates.

Does this seem a bit pricey for a school considering for $499 you can buy a
2.2 ghz dell?Schools are on a budget and its cheaper in the long run to just buy the cheapest now and upgrade every 2 1/2 years then buy the latest and greatest and upgrade every 4 years.

Also Linux lacks major software for students like games and MS Word and Excel. Yes openoffice can open some of the file formats but MS Word can check not only spelling but sentence structure, readability and Flecsh grade level, and ole ability to drop in an excel chart into a word document for example. Word 2003 even has Encarta integrated into it so you can highlight a word and research a topic. It's pretty nice when you're writing a paper.

Excel can do polynomial math while OpenOffice cannot which blows if you're doing anything accounting or scientific oriented.

Each operating has its strengths and weaknesses and is not better or worse then the other. As a basic operating system Windows blows goatballs. It's insecure, unreliable and not as programmable as Unix or Linux.

But for average joe users Windows is still king until openoffice catches up, Linux has a reliable package manager that's as easy to use as a Windows setup.exe program, and when we have more software ported. Also alot of gnu apps have been ported to Windows. I use Windows2k with perl, gvim, mozilla, apache, mysql, gcc with devc++ and openoffice. Windows users can gradually get use to the idea of free software and switch when Linux is ready or when palladium comes out.

Last but not least Dennis Ritchie himself uses WindowsNT as his main desktop operating sytem. He just logs into plan9 and inferno servers from a client on his desktop. I agree on the idea of terminals and vnc clients on Windows boxes. I think unless the school is really cash stripped that Windows with vnc software for the occasional unix app is more appropriate and would lower support costs since students prefer Windows. Go to any college NT/Linux lab and NT is always loaded.

Gcc is good, open, and could use some work, so please think about helping out. My favorite is MinGW which is a really nice and decently maintained Win32 version of gcc and binutils. MinGW also distributes MSYS which is a bash shell and other gnu utilities that make a windows box capable of running a Linux configure script. This allows much easier porting of GNU applications to windows and vice versa. There are several GUI compilers based on MinGW too, see the web page FAQ. A nice GUI GCC based compiler for Win32 is Bloodshed Dev-C++, which I've used.

Cygwin is good too but I prefer MinGW (obviously).

So think about helping out, our tools will only get better if folks work on them.

If you're looking to replace Visual Studio for programs that don't rely too much on the COM wizards and such, try out Dev-C++. It's pretty fast, too, and it uses GCC :-).

I just downloaded eclipse and found the interface horrible and awkward. The source editor is tiny and everything needs to be added as a plugin. Click on the plugins and a million tabs obstruct the view for the source editor. I only use 1024 x 768 resolution so maybe the designers had bigger monitors but it was unbearable and difficult to do basic things.

Dev-c++ was easy. I just selected "new project" and selected the project I wanted. No bizaare menu's obstructing my menu space. Just a class browser and a source editor. When you compile a project with Dev-C++, the debugger and compiler log pop out just like Visual c++. Its very well integrated. The only downside is its very c/c++ oriented while Eclipse is java oriented with beta level c++ support.

Eclipse screenshots are here and devc++ is here.

I dont know for SURE if it's open source, and it might not be non-geek, but I think it's a good idea to spare 10-15 megas for a good beginners c++ compiler. You can get it here, just follow the links. Good for students, hobbyists, and maybe quake modders too!

Bloodshed Dev-C++! It's the best free IDE for Windows that I know. Includes GCC 2.95.3.

FileZilla is an excellent FTP client.