Baphomet

I'm teaching a class on C++. The college's IT department is pressuring me to use visual C++. But I don't want to my students using it, because it has a tendency to crash fairly often (for me anyway). I'd like to know what your opinion is on a few compilers and if you have any recommendations. I'd prefer something that's not bloatware. The computers at this school are fairly old... I need a detailed explanation of it's features cons as well as pros...

Infinite Recursion

Dev-C++. http://bloodshed.net

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Narue

>I'd like to know what your opinion is on a few compilers and if you have any recommendations.
Start them off with a command line compiler. You don't want to encourage the next wave of point and click programmers, do you? I would recommend Comeau, obviously because it's the most standards conforming C and C++ compiler I know of at the moment.

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Jessehk

Completely random question, Narue.

If I remember right, you have said that you've worked on compilers and implementations of libc, etc. Which compilers would those be?

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mrynit

i have had terrible personal experiance with MSVS 6.0 on school computers. if the school has a *nix server you could use CC or GCC. keep in mind bytes size differences for data types for different compilers and platforms.

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The Dark

I agree that getting them to use a command line compiler would be a better start, auto-completion and the like are great features, but making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn.

Move on to an IDE later.

I'd still recommend Visual C, but I haven't had it crash on me in years. Which version are you using?

Narue

>i have had terrible personal experiance with MSVS 6.0 on school computers.
I've had terrible experiences with Visual C++ 6.0 as well, but that mostly has to do with the horrible implementation of the standard library and broken features. Recent versions are better.

>you have said that you've worked on compilers and implementations of libc, etc.
Yes, and yes, both professionally and as personal projects.

>Which compilers would those be?
To avoid pointed questions from people who want to talk directly to a developer of their compiler, I decided a while ago not to say.

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DaWei

That simplifies things. I'm blaming you for ALL of 'em.

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