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Question about learning C

KyonEXE

Is there any free teaching tools for C programming?  I want to get back into it a little bit.  Free cool compiler to learn as well would be cool ^^  Thanks :) 

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Ah sorry.  Meant to post in Programming.  Not sure how it ended up here..

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Not sure if Codeacademy has a course on C, but if it does its probably good.

I personally use Notepad++ and compile with MinGW, but you can use Visual Studio to make it quicker.

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Well, not just a C compiler, but get something with a decent debugger as well. An IDE like Visual Studio Express or Eclipse is useful for this. If you want to get more "raw", I'd suggest getting VirtualBox and installing a flavor of Linux on it, then get comfy with the command line and tools like gcc and gdb (or ddd).

 

If you're hoping to add some professional skills, I'd highly recommend going the Linux and gcc path, because almost everyone uses gcc or some form of it and it'd be helpful to at least be familiar with it and how makefiles work.

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In terms of learning materials, coursera, carnegie melon open courseware, and youtube have tons of tutorials.

 

My recommendation for any platform is to use either NetBeans or Qt Creator free edition and the clang compiler because the errors and warnings are incredibly clear compared to other compilers, and the IDEs expound on them very well. 

Software Engineer for Suncorp (Australia), Computer Tech Enthusiast, Miami University Graduate, Nerd

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This might be of interest to you if you are interested in game development on windows:

 

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Thank you for the replies guys.  Is Visual Studio 2015 free(ish?)  I got really comfy with that compiler, but since I'm not in school I think my account isn't really active..  I am trying out CodeBlocks see what it's like :)

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13 hours ago, KyonEXE said:

Thank you for the replies guys.  Is Visual Studio 2015 free(ish?)  I got really comfy with that compiler, but since I'm not in school I think my account isn't really active..  I am trying out CodeBlocks see what it's like :)

Visual studio COMMUNITY is free.

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21 hours ago, KyonEXE said:

Thank you for the replies guys.  Is Visual Studio 2015 free(ish?)  I got really comfy with that compiler, but since I'm not in school I think my account isn't really active..  I am trying out CodeBlocks see what it's like :)

Yes, you can download and use Visual Studio Community for free. If I recall correctly, you will need to sign up for a visual studio account to continue using it after the 30 day trial but it wont cost you anything. As a bonus, you also get to join the Visual Studio Dev Essentials program which gives you access to a bunch of resources for free, although I'm not sure how many of them offer any benefit to a C programmer. For example, the program gives you 3 months free to Pluralsight but it looks like it only has one course on C.

 

Visual Studio uses it's own C and C++ compiler (often referred to as MSVC compiler). The compiler that comes with Visual Studio 2015 supports some (most?) of C99 but doesn't support C11. Microsoft is much more invested in the C++ community than the C community but you can still do a lot of C development with Visual Studio.

 

Many other IDEs (CLion, Code::Blocks, etc) use GCC (or whatever you tell it to use) which seems to be the most popular option for C development. I believe GCC supports most (all?) of C99 and C11.

 

Ultimately it's up to you what you use. Personally, I use GCC and CLion whenever I feel like playing around with C and it's what I would use if I was going to learn more C.

 

That said, I'm by no means a C developer. I learned the basics of C back in university but stopped there and haven't ever used it professionally. I find Rust to be a more interesting language choice so that's what I plan to focus on over C (if I ever get the time).

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Try searching for an open source textbook. 

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