What's a Good Yet Free Compiler for C?

[Zampano]

I wondering because I've been trying to learn about this lately and all the compilers I saw and downloaded don't seem to have an executable file at all. I don't know how I show start the compiler.
What do you guys using for compiling C?

[rdrake]

GCC!

[md]

gcc is *the* compiler for most every open source app out there.

But! If your looking for something super small and very fast look at teh Tiny C Compiler.

[Zampano]

Thanks!

[Mazer]

It's probably worth stating that programming in C isn't like programming in Turing, and I don't even mean that they're different languages.

Turing is an IDE. It's also a compiler, because they wanted to combine the two for some reason. But with C you just have a compiler. Because that's all there really needs to be. You can find IDEs on top of that, but as far as the compiler is concerned you have given it a text file containing source code, and it's going to compile that.

You're not really going to be doing things like double click on C.exe and start typing code into the window that pops up.

[Zampano]

Thanks Mazer, but that's not new to me. I'm aware of the difficulties associated with programming in C, but I think I'll be fine with a copy of Sams' Teach Yourself C by my side (not actually written by Sam).

[wtd]

"Difficulties"?

I think in time you may come to appreciate having the ability to choose a text editor that best suits your style.

[Nick]

what if IDE's suit your style

[Naveg]

well, then there's linux

[Bobrobyn]

I use Kate for editing (I know it's bloated, but I like it's style ), and GCC for compilation. I think it's better to learn without an IDE first. When I first started, I thought the IDE was EVERYTHING, lol.

[McKenzie]

most kids found C-Free to be very straight forward