Visual Studio Express 2008

When talking about free C/C++ IDE's you can't ignore VSE2008 from Microsoft! VSE is a very big set of programs, must be installed on a hard drive, and isn't the easiest interface to work with, but it is a very good IDE!

An especially, neat thing about VSE is you can add the free Dark GDK to VSE. The Dark GDK is a very nice graphics and gaming library that was originally part of Dark BASIC, but was ported into a C++ library which can be easily added to the Visual Studio Express environment . I've seen true newbies to programming hack out a simple graphics game within a couple of weeks using Dark GDK and Dark BASIC, and it's just as easy with C++.

I highly recommend Visual Studio Express 2008, especially if you will be working on a simple computer most of the time. The learning curve for the Visual Studio IDE is steeper than several other IDE's, but in the long run it is worth it. Once you have a handle on the VS interface you'll find it easy to transfer your skills to Visual Basic, Visual C++, etc, etc, etc.

wxDev-C++

Speaking of Dev-CPP...

Although, you can develop windowed programs in Dev-CPP, it isn't really easy or convenient to do so. Unlike more modern IDE's Visual Studio Express, for example, there isn't a built in Form Designer, nor an easy way to add resources...like icons... to a project. Enter wxDev-C++!

wxDev-C++ is an extension of Dev-C++ by Colin Laplace et. al. This program helps you to create dialogs and frames for wxWidgets visually using a form designer. With all the wonderful features of Dev-C++, wxDev-C++ is still being actively developed. The main aim of this project is to provide the wxWidgets community with a free, open-source, commercial-grade IDE/RAD tool for development with wxWidgets.

Frankly even if you are just doing console based programs this newer version might be the way to go. I've been using the latest Release Candidates for Version 7.0 for the last six months with no problems at all for C and C++ console programs. There are still a few bugs with the form designer and sometimes windowed programs have some strange effects, but even then I haven't run into a "showstopper."

wxDev-C++ gets 5 stars from me!

Oh, and check out the tutorials at the wxDev-C++ site! There is also an almost complete book online with lots of help getting started on windowed programming. You will need to dig around on that site to find the actual PDF you'll need to download, though.