Thread: Suitable Compiler?

Hi!

I couln't find a Newbies platform, so I hope you don't mind me putting my question here:

I am going to start programming in C++, mostly calculations, and in the end some simple graphical output (probably wire images, nothing fancy). If I understand correctly from forums and theory, the possible output depends on the compiler (true ?), so I would like to know which could be useful to me. Plus some compilers work better than others and I have no idea or experience for judgement.

I already installed Code::Blocks for an environment, which seems pretty straight.
And I tried cygwin, but that's just a fuzzy mess to me.
My OS is Windows XP, supposedly Microsoft offers a bunch of free C++ - compilers.

Your advice would be most kind.
Cheers, Carola

If you know your program will never need to be run on anything other than Windows (Mac, Linux, UNIX, BSD, PSPs, iPods...), use Visual Studio.

Otherwise use an IDE (since you are apparently not comfortable with the command line) that supports GCC - Code::Blocks, Dev-C++, etc. They all use the same compiler "under the hood" (at least by default). GCC is available for just about all platforms under the sun, so it would be easier to port your code to other platforms, should the need arises.

Thanks a lot for the tips,
they are very helpful!

I think I'll go for the C::B MinGW and see where I get