The Sun NetBeans 6 IDE is a free development environment for Java, but is available for cross platform C/C++ development as well. The NetBeans 6 download is about 12MB and unpacks to about 55MB. Sun recommends using Cygwin C/C++, GMake, and GDB debugger. With some additional effort MinGW can be used as an alternative compiler on Windows machines. Users that choose MinGW will need MSYS support. This document gives a brief overview of the installation process. For a detailed explanation visit the NetBeans and Cygwin web sites. [More…]

Learning to program C++ is not what I would call a simple task. Finding books that present the information at your level of comprehension is important. Beginners need a simple step-by-step presentation that an experienced programmer is likely to find boring. The collection of book listed below is oriented towards individuals with some existing experience and programming knowledge. The texts are considered to be among the best available, and will move you through the intermediate stages and into the advanced. [More…]