"How can i do C++ for free?"

2018-08-30 10:54  freecpp     [permalink]

Someone at work asked me "Is there a way to do some C++ for free?", and told me to mail some links. I did and thought it's a kind of nice overview, so I post it here as well.

If you're looking for a free C++ development environment, the first thing I can think of is:

http://www.codeblocks.org/ 

but one of the main trendsetters has ofcourse always been Microsoft Visual C++, you can obtain here:
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=Community&rel=15 

or ex-Borland's version with language extensions to make its UI designer work:

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter

if you're willing to get to work with just a compiler, then this one is getting good remarks recently, not only because it's giving usefull error messages: 
https://clang.llvm.org/ 

but there are plenty more:
https://gcc.gnu.org/ 
https://digitalmars.com/download/freecompiler.html 
http://openwatcom.org/download.php 
https://software.intel.com/en-us/c-compilers 
https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/ccompiler (or perhaps this one https://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20633 )

(or the list from the creator of C++ itself: http://www.stroustrup.com/compilers.html  )

but C++ is getting some negative remarks lately:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+C%2B%2B+sucks 

so what is recommendable to learn? currently good candidates are:

https://dlang.org/ 
https://golang.org/ 
https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/ 
https://www.lua.org/ 
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/ 

and ofcourse:
https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-download 

→