C on Visual Studio [closed]

Answer 1

http://xoax.net/comp/cpp/console/Lesson0.php

Any use?

Answer 2

Some people say that a smaller IDE is better for learning. Take a look at Code::Blocks. It's generally true that beginning C in an IDE is hard because not many books explain enough to control the IDE. Perhaps starting in a console and a basic text editor with syntax highlighting would be better – at least under Linux. Since Windows' console is far from great, I'd not recommend using it.

/EDIT: Dev-C++ used to be the best freely available IDE for Windows. However, it's development has been discontinued years ago and the most recent version unfortunately is full of bugs.

Answer 3

As already said, you should check out the VS.net C++ edition, but if you'd like to try something else Eclipse has a C++ edition. You can get more info from http://eclipse.org or check out the distro at http://www.easyeclipse.org/site/distributions/cplusplus.html

Answer 4

Simple and sweet: Console applications (basic C programs using printf and such) are easily and cheaply done with the Tiny C Compiler - a no frills, no gui, complete C complier.

http://bellard.org/tcc/

However, C development is relatively simple on Visual Studio as well. The following instructions will set Visual C++ up as a good C compiler, and it will produce console applications at first, and yo can move up into more complex windows apps as you go.

1. Get the Visual Studio C++ edition (express is fine)
2. Start a new project - disable pre-compiled headers (maybe the wizard will let you do this, maybe you'll have to change the compiler settings once inside the project)
3. Delete everything inside the project.
4. Create a new "example.c" file with the hello world example
5. Compile and away you go.

Alternately, get a linux virtual machine, or Cygwin. But as you already have Visual Studio, you might as well stick with what you know.

As an aside, this isn't Atwood learning C finally, is it? No ALTs! ;-D

-Adam

Answer 5

Bloodshed Dev-C++ is the best windows C/C++ IDE IMO: http://www.bloodshed.net/ It uses the GNU compiler set and is free as in beer.

EDIT: the download page for the IDE is here: http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/devcpp.html

Answer 6

Visual Studio or Express do consider .c files as C code, but the compiler will keep giving warnings, and irritating suggestions which you do not require, in the debugger. Gives an indication that Visual C++, as the name suggests is optimized for C++ development for the Windows Operating system, which was originally written in plain pure C.