What programming language would you reccomend?

[ccexplore]

I think you may be better off with an integrated development environment based on your prior experiences.  Anyone has any to recommend?  Most of what I've used previously are paid products.  Microsoft's http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-express-windows-desktop" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Visual Studio Express is free, though obviously it is geared more towards Windows programming (but should be non-issue for the sort of things you'd to following a C++ tutorial).

Background info for mobius:  the compiler technically is just the program that converts your source files, ie. "the files of source code that you type in", into machine code such as an executable binary like an EXE file in Windows.  No matter what you use, it is almost always possible to just use your favorite text editor to type in the source code, and then separately run the compiler and related tools afterwards to turn them into the program you can actually run.  An integrated development environment (IDE) is more like what you're probably used to with Python etc., where you are presented one program that includes the text editor as well as the compiler and other tools, so you just type in code in the IDE and then do "compile" or "run" from a menu or toolbar in the IDE.

[Simon]

IDE: Under Windows, I've used http://www.codeblocks.org/" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Codeblocks, a free and cross-platform IDE for C++ and others. cc's proposal of Microsoft Visual Studio Express should also work nicely.

Some consider bloated what others consider essential, so you have to choose if/which IDE to use yourself in the end. Guyperfect will likely recommend not using an IDE at all, and just doing everything with the command line. (-: You might learn some fundamentals that way, and it is not hard either.

Without IDE: Use any text editor, write a hello world program, and save it somewhere with .cpp as the extension. Open a command line, switch to the file's directory and type g++ yourfile.cpp. If you get no console output, everything works, and there will be a generated executable in the same directory.

If you get compiler errors, fix the source. If you get "g++: command not found" or similar error, see whether there is an executable named g++ among the executables installed by MinGW. If there is none, but there is g++-win32 or similar, copy that and name it g++. If the command is still not found even though g++ exists, add the directory containing the MinGW executables to your PATH variable. Hunt around the web for how to do that on your Windows system.

I'm sitting in IRC, should you need quick help.

-- Simon

[Simon]

[21:13] <apple_stack> I hit cancel and command prompt says:   g++: error: hello.cpp no such file or dir g++fatal error: no input files compilation terminated.

MinGW and g++ seem correctly installed and callable from the command line. You can proceed with or without an IDE.

-- Simon