learning C?

[lonelyrobot]

I am trying to learn C programming. Can anyone suggest a free compiler that is easy to set up? I tried using mingw, but something is going wrong. If you can provide how to instructions for installation, setup, and running a simple program that would be a huge help so that I could test it out to make sure it works on my computer. Also can you recommend any good books for beginners?

Is there any advantage in buying Microsoft Visual for someone who is just starting out?

My operating system is Vista. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[TrainTrackHack]

What problems are you having with MinGW? That's what I use and it's just fine. If you get a good IDE like Code::Blocks or Eclipse, pretty much all you need is to have MinGW installed and they'll automatically detect and set up the compiler for you.

And no, buying Microsoft Visual anything is pointless if you're just starting out - the Express versions of their tools are absolutely fine and more for beginning users.

EDIT: Any particular reason as to why you chose C? C++ is more modern, widespread and consequently has more resources available for it. Even though it's based off C you don't need to know C beforehand and, as a matter of fact, learning C++ first might make getting into C even easier.

EDIT2: www.cplusplus.com is my favourite place for anything C/C++ related. They also have a free, downloadable C++ tutorial.