Thread: Recommended C++ compiler and IDE for Windows

Hey all, been a while . Work and life in general has kept me away from this forum, but I'm hoping I can ply you all for some advice.

I'm wondering if anybody can recommend a good, modern IDE and compiler for Windows.

I've been working at a small university for the past few months teaching some intro programming classes. The university is recommending Dev-C++ to the students, which is way out of date. They're open to updating, but there's only one full time faculty, and they're too swamped to deal with stuff like this. The students hate Dev-C++; it doesn't work well on most of the lab computers or their laptops.

The school doesn't have much money, so whatever we replace it with would need to be free, or very cheap.

Code::Blocks used to be frequently recommended on this site. While the C::B forum and repo seem to be active, there hasn't been a release in 1.5 years AFAICT. Has C::B begun to die off, or would y'all still recommend it?

What about alternatives like Eclipse, Netbeans or CodeLite or CLion?

As far as compilers go, any recommendation on MinGW vs Clang or others?

Thanks a bunch.

Another option, if you don't actually need the smarts of an IDE (it being an introductory course) might be to create a well-designed CMake project. The students wouldn't have to do anything, or at worst add their source files to some list. The choice of compiler (e.g. mingw-w64) and text editor (e.g. Atom or VSCode) would still be open.

p.s. Not sure Clang is well supported on Windows yet, but I didn't have any big issues with GCC (mingw).

Since you mention Windows have you considered Visual Studio 2017? I've heard that there may be a version free to download.

Thanks.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm teaching some intro courses, but pretty much all the courses, including advanced ones, are C++ (though honestly, the bar is not very high at this school, so I'm not sure that "advanced" is that advanced).

I totally forgot about the Orwell version, though the latest update seems to be 2 years ago, so I'm probably gonna write that off. :/

I kinda forgot about Atom. And I didn't realize VSCode was a thing, but it looks nice.

I guess I got my work cut out for me, trying all these things out.

Originally Posted by jimblumberg

Since you mention Windows have you considered Visual Studio 2017? I've heard that there may be a version free to download.

or Visual Studio 2015 desktop express (free). You willl have to search for this as the links have changed over time.

Visual Studio 2015 desktop express (free).

IMO, this version is a little outdated, the C++ support is behind the times, get the latest version if possible.

Jim