Would I be better off trading Xcode for something less inclusive?

Wow, I've been to this site so many times in the past few months and NEVER KNEW there was a message board!

I'm a student working on a degree in Computer Science. Right now, we are learning C and to complete the labs and homework, I've been using Xcode on my Mac. It seems easy, I write a program, click run and debug as necessary.

I have two concerns however. (1) Because I'm a novice programmer, I'm worried that Xcode is holding my hand too much in terms of its auto-complete syntax features and the "click to fix" feature. What concerns me is that while I can type code in Xcode and type some incorrect syntax, I immediately get a red flag and can see what I did. I know at first glance that sounds like a benefit and, maybe it is, but consider this; when I take my exams, I will likely have to freehand several programs using something like notepad. So, is it possible that I would learn more thoroughly by writing my code in a text editor and compiling/debugging separately?

Concern (2) is that Xcode only runs on Mac. Somewhere I saw someone make a comment like "Xcode is great until you get a job that forces you to use a PC". Would it be wise while I'm in the infant stages of my programming education to use something more universally available such as Emacs? I'm worried I will become reliant on Xcode and master it, all to have to start over and learn a completely new IDE once I begin my career.

Any input on this?

Thanks in advance.

eclipse is a good option for multi-platform development, although if you're developing for iOS, Xcode is the only option. absent that requirement, eclipse should fill all your needs for dozens of languages and platforms. I use it for C, C++, Python, and go, and of course it's the de-facto standard for java.

Thanks! I installed Eclipse Juno CDT last evening and wrote a few homework programs. Once I figured out a few things, it was quite a nice program! I think I'll stick with this seeing as how its cross platform.

Thanks Elkvis.