I have an book on C programming, and yeah, I don't have a C compiler to use. Do you know of any good, free compilers that would work with both Windows XP and 7? Thank you!

Use a Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Express to both write and compile. It is phenomenal!
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40787
I know it compiles C#, Basic, and C++ so I would assume it compiles C. It's also nice because it has a nice optional drag-and-drop interface for designing the GUI, in which it automatically adds the XHTML code. One nice benefit.

Note: 2013 only works with Windows 7, and older one'll work with XP.

turkey3 wrote:

Use a Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Express to both write and compile. It is phenomenal!
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40787
I know it compiles C#, Basic, and C++ so I would assume it compiles C. It's also nice because it has a nice optional drag-and-drop interface for designing the GUI, in which it automatically adds the XHTML code. One nice benefit.

Note: 2013 only works with Windows 7, and older one'll work with XP.

I did a quick search and it does! Excellent, thank you very much!

StarscreamClone wrote:

turkey3 wrote:

Use a Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Express to both write and compile. It is phenomenal!
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40787
I know it compiles C#, Basic, and C++ so I would assume it compiles C. It's also nice because it has a nice optional drag-and-drop interface for designing the GUI, in which it automatically adds the XHTML code. One nice benefit.

Note: 2013 only works with Windows 7, and older one'll work with XP.

I did a quick search and it does! Excellent, thank you very much!

No problem! Just be patient, the download and installation takes forever

You might already be starting with that but I use MinGW (when I'm on Windows anyway, I haven't done C in Windows in ages) which is the Windows version of the GNU Compiler Collection. MinGW stands for Minimal GNU for Windows. It doesn't come with an IDE (although you could use something like Code::Blocks) but it's all personal preference. IMO Visual Studio is kind of bloated and it's also proprietary. GCC is free, open-source, cross platform, and isn't bound to a heavy IDE.

I don't program in C, but I did do a little bit of C++. For that, I used Code::Blocks because it had everything I needed when I began. Microsoft Visual Studio is absolutely amazing, but I found that it was overkill when I was just starting to learn.

16Skittles wrote:

You might already be starting with that but I use MinGW (when I'm on Windows anyway, I haven't done C in Windows in ages) which is the Windows version of the GNU Compiler Collection. MinGW stands for Minimal GNU for Windows. It doesn't come with an IDE (although you could use something like Code::Blocks) but it's all personal preference. IMO Visual Studio is kind of bloated and it's also proprietary. GCC is free, open-source, cross platform, and isn't bound to a heavy IDE.

I wouldn't call it “bloated” because that's like saying it has a large amount of useless features that should be removed. With a few tutorials, getting the hang of it isn't even that bad. It is definitely the most professional I would say.

16Skittles wrote:

You might already be starting with that but I use MinGW (when I'm on Windows anyway, I haven't done C in Windows in ages) which is the Windows version of the GNU Compiler Collection. MinGW stands for Minimal GNU for Windows. It doesn't come with an IDE (although you could use something like Code::Blocks) but it's all personal preference. IMO Visual Studio is kind of bloated and it's also proprietary. GCC is free, open-source, cross platform, and isn't bound to a heavy IDE.

I thought GCC is the GNU C Compiler?

scimonster wrote:

16Skittles wrote:

You might already be starting with that but I use MinGW (when I'm on Windows anyway, I haven't done C in Windows in ages) which is the Windows version of the GNU Compiler Collection. MinGW stands for Minimal GNU for Windows. It doesn't come with an IDE (although you could use something like Code::Blocks) but it's all personal preference. IMO Visual Studio is kind of bloated and it's also proprietary. GCC is free, open-source, cross platform, and isn't bound to a heavy IDE.

I thought GCC is the GNU C Compiler?

But it's not for Windows, and MinGW is one of the ports.

scimonster wrote:

16Skittles wrote:

You might already be starting with that but I use MinGW (when I'm on Windows anyway, I haven't done C in Windows in ages) which is the Windows version of the GNU Compiler Collection. MinGW stands for Minimal GNU for Windows. It doesn't come with an IDE (although you could use something like Code::Blocks) but it's all personal preference. IMO Visual Studio is kind of bloated and it's also proprietary. GCC is free, open-source, cross platform, and isn't bound to a heavy IDE.

I thought GCC is the GNU C Compiler?

It could be that way, Wikipedia says that it was originally GNU C Compiler until they began to add more compilers.

scimonster wrote:

16Skittles wrote:

You might already be starting with that but I use MinGW (when I'm on Windows anyway, I haven't done C in Windows in ages) which is the Windows version of the GNU Compiler Collection. MinGW stands for Minimal GNU for Windows. It doesn't come with an IDE (although you could use something like Code::Blocks) but it's all personal preference. IMO Visual Studio is kind of bloated and it's also proprietary. GCC is free, open-source, cross platform, and isn't bound to a heavy IDE.

I thought GCC is the GNU C Compiler?

It would be strange for a C compiler to also compile FORTRAN.

I agree with 16Skittles; I have MinGW (which actually isn't just a windows port of the gcc, with MSYS it's like cygwin) set up on my system, though it's sometimes hard to compile with it because it throws strange errors about missing files or utilities.

Check out GCC.