simple C++

[Jeffrey Stephens]

Your thanks are appreciated.  One more plug for "gide".  Kdevelop, I think, is way
to complex and bloated for what, in my understanding, you need.  If you really
want a fancy IDE with all the bells and whistles I would suggest C-Forge. You can
get it at www.codeforge.com.  I've tried about every IDE for Linux there is and
this one is, in my opinion, the best.  It's a commercial product, but they offer a
free version that is limited to 200 files per project and doesn't include a few of
the bells/whistles.  C-Forge has an excellent and mercifully short tutorial for C
that will get you up and working in 5 or 10 minutes.

Having said this I still recommend gide for students learning C.  The one thing
all these 'Project' oriented IDEs suffer from is that they are designed to be used
with large efforts.  A large program still only has one 'main' function.
Therefore, every time you code a new program you have to define a new Project
because a project only contains a single 'main'.  The amount of overhead in
clicking and typing to create a new project just to type in a small program is
irksome to say the least.

Gide is a simple editor with auto indent and highlighting for C. From it's
pulldown menu you can automatically compile and run your program.  It is
configurable so you can send the output to a terminal window.  The terminal window
pops up when you run the program so you can type in any info the program needs.
It's simple and easy to use.  The major IDEs are such that you could write a whole
book on how to use their features.  This probably isn't what you want for students
learning to program.

Regards,

Jeff Stephens

OS wrote:

> Red Hat do a nice editor called Source Navigator. It is available from
> sources.redhat.com. They are also working on Insight, a graphical front end to
> gdb, but it is very definitely beta at the moment !
>
> Owen
>
> On Wed, 04 Oct 2000, you wrote:
> > For a very simple C++ editor try "gide".  It's available from gide.pn.org.  I
> > had the same problem as I am trying to learn C++ on my own.  This one is very
> > simple but offers the compile/run options from within the editing window and
> > output springs up in an xterm.  For a debugger don't use gdb by itself.
> > Download the 'ddd' graphical front end for gdb which is excellent.  It is
> > available from multiple sources on the net.  Just search on 'ddd and linux'.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jeff Stephens
> >
> > Erik Hjelmås wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I work at a college where we're considering switching to Linux starting
> > > with the programming classes. We've used Borlands c++ compiler for the
> > > last 6-7 years I think. Here's my problem;
> > >
> > > - emacs is to tough for many of the beginners whose just taking one or two
> > > programming classes
> > >
> > > - kwrite and gcc is a combination, but gdb i to tough as a debugger
> > >
> > > I would like to use Kdevelop from day one, but isn't there any way I can
> > > program simple C++ programs without creating a whole projects with dousins
> > > of files?
> > >
> > > Is there any chance Kdevelop will give me this option in the future?
> > >
> > > I would like to use Kdevelop because its seems very easy to both program,
> > > compile and debug for beginners (and of course offers so much more later
> > > on in the classes).
> > >
> > > hope this wasn't off topic, if so I apologize
> > >
> > > cheers,
> > >
> > > /Erik
> > >
> > > ****************************
> > > Erik Hjelmås   http://www.hig.no/~erikh    erikh at hig.no