On 04/03/12 19:59, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Mel_3 writes:
I have some programming experience... way back :) x86 ASM, Basic, VBA,
ASP,
PHP, & very little C.
I've decided to start to work on learning C & C++.
Question 1: Is this the forum for GCC newbie questions?
It is.
Question 2: Does GCC C/C++ compilers compile to "native code" for
deployment
on Windows machines?
Yes.
Question 3: Can you do full blown Windows GUI application development in
GCC? (and then cross compile to other platforms... Apple & Linux?)
Microsoft Windows, Apple OS, and Linux, use completely different GUI
libraries, that have very little in common with each other. The language
is the same, of course, but the libraries and APIs are completely
different.
There are some non-native libraries, such as QT, that offer some level
of cross-platform compatibility across multiple platforms. Still, the
vast differences between the operating systems mean that even if your
application builds against QT on, say, Linux, you have no guarantees
whatsover that you can simply dump your source code into a Windows box,
together with the Windows port of QT, feed everything to gcc, and get
working results.
You should focus your energies on learning C++, the language, first.
That should take a while. And after you are comfortable with the
language itself, then you can begin looking at platform-specific APIs,
be it MS Windows, Apple OS, or Linux.
I agree on learning the language first, but thereafter try to avoid
platform-specific APIs unless you actually need them. Look at the big
three cross-platform libraries - QT, GTK and wxWidgets (and possibly at
one of the smaller ones), pick one that looks nice and you like the
tools, and use that rather than platform specific code. Only use
Windows-specific or Linux-specific features or APIs if you really need them.
