pif13

i can't spend any money on a compiler or any books, because i'm a kid and i don't have money that i can spend on that stuff. can anyone reccomend me a good (free) compiler and good (free) learning resources?

edit: is dev-c++ any good?

coldDeath

Dev-C++ is a good IDE.

Tutorials:
www.cprogramming.com
www.cplusplus.com
www.google.com
Books:
Bruce Eckels Thinking in C++ (free book download) (probably too hard for you though)

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pif13

thanks

UnKnown X

Do you have any other programming experience? C++ is hard to jump right into.

I tried, and it worked for a while, but I progressed quite slowly when I got to classes and pointers, and it gets especially hard once you reach the more advanced stuff like inheritance and such.

So unless you already know some other languages, I suggest you learn one. Something very high-level like Python.

pif13

i know some python (i know all of the basics and i have a little knowledge of classes, methods, etc.).. i can't do graphics or anything but i use easygui to do gui (i don't know tkinter).. i just decided that i would rather learn c++ or something like that instead of continuing with python (i know, dumb decision, but it's just something that i want to do). do you think i have enough knowledge to learn c++? if not, are there any other languages that i could/should learn before c++?

Mjordan2nd

Python's a great language. Out of curiosity, why have you decided to switch?

I think you could learn to program in C++ without any prior programming knowledge, though it's true, certain aspects would be difficult to learn for someone without any programming experience. It is still not that difficult, imho. Since you already have experience with Python, I think that you should be able to pick it up fairly easily, at least until you get to pointers. Pointers seem to stump a lot of people, but you'll get more comfortable with them as you continue practicing C++.

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Cache

C++ is my first ever programming language, and I'm glad I chose it as my first too. Maybe you can learn it faster with prior knowledge of programming, but so what? If you want to learn C++ then give it a shot. If you find it too hard then try something else. I think C++ is a great language to start with -- the basics are easy to pick up, and classes are a god send. Pointers are a bit crazy, but even basic pointer usage is easy (for dynamic memory allocation and such).

para

Microsoft's compiler is free ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/ ) as is a GNU GCC port ( http://www.mingw.org/ )

This is just the backend compiler (command prompt). If you want the GUI stuff you'll also want to download an IDE (integrated development environment). Someone said Dev-C++, that's a good one (I believe it works with both microsoft's compiler and gnu's). Also if you use Linux I highly recommend the Anjuta ( http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ ) IDE.

I hear CPlusPlus.com has a good tutorial; http://cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ , although I've never read it.
After you read through the tutorial and get a feel for things, I recommend downloading a few programs you're interested in (within reason) from sourceforge.net (all source code is free there), and looking around how they might be doing it. I find open source a useful tool in learning

pif13

well, when i was 10 (last year) and i started to get into programming i didn't have a clue what i was doing but i knew that i wanted to learn c++ because i knew that it's very powerful. i found out that it was too hard so i started to learn python. i learned a lot of python (well not a ton, but enough) and i decided to try and learn c++ again. thank you, everyone, for all your help!

edit: can i use dev-c++ by itself or do i HAVE to use it with something else?

nindoja

All you need to do is download dev-c++ with the MiniGW compiler (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/d....9.2_setup.exe ). It will do all of the compiler arguments for you. If you choose to use the microsoft one, you will have to set the compiler arguments seperatly.