Beginners programming

I'm sure you have seen this thread a million times, so once I get a satisfactory answer I will let it die/sage

What should the first language I learn be?
What program should I write it in?
What's the best compiler for the language you are advising me to try?
Should I do my work on Linux or Windows?
Best book, or site that will teach me the language?
Any other thoughts?

>>40
I was comparing Microsoft's C++ compiler (which is usually invoked in VS) to GCC.  Reread.

>>39
That's true, and I never thought about it.

>>38
Yeah, that's about when I think it makes sense to use an IDE.  Usually I find people have trouble getting into VS when they don't know anything about programming, while you can tell them a simple shell command like gcc -o outname srcfile.c and they can manage well.  But like >>39 said, you can invoke the MS compiler directly.

>>39

">" means greater than
"<" means less than

>>39
Interesting. Can you call the debugger directly? Is there a command-line interface?

>>43
Yes, there's actually multiple debuggers depending on what you want to debug, and there's quite a few third party debuggers for Win32 as well. Look at Microsoft's "Debugging Tools for Windows" if you want the the gdb equivalent for windows(both user and kernel mode, remote and local debuggers).

>>41
I think Visual Studio is far superior to the gcc.
Cool story bro.

>>45
Even as a NECKBEARD, the gcc is one of the worst compilers out there.

>>46
Worst at what? Or at everything? If at code generation, then by all means please supply us with a code snippet that will be compiled better by MS compiler than gcc. Everyone uses gcc. Even god damn sony.

>>46
The point is about how Visual Studio is not a compiler at all.

>>46
realy? name me one compiler that can support more CPU and µ-controller architectures.

>>47
Sony should start using LISP again.

>>47
MS C is a pretty good compiler for Win32. GCC performs okay, but overall worse than it for general purpose code. GCC tends to generate a lot of bloat (and no, I'm not talking about those damn debug symbols that tend to take 5 times the actual code size, as those can be stripped), I'm talking about how GCC manages the stack, register allocation, pipelining, and so on. Intel's compiler is likely better than MS' when it comes to CPU-specific optimizations, while MS' is mostly average, but solid, predictable and of mostly decent quality with its code generation. GCC, on the other hand, can generate unintiligible messes which are not that efficient, even if that was their supposed goal. It's not really GCC's fault, as when one makes a generic compiler as GCC which is supposed to support many CPUs and platforms, it's hard to make the best code generation on all platforms, and one usually compromises for something 'good enough'.
tl;dr: GCC's strength is in the amount of CPUs/OSes supported, open source nature, okay standard compliance.
MS C's strengths are in Win32-only code generation for x86 and x86 64, which is quite a limited set, but for this limited set it does quite well
ICC's strength lies on the x86, x86 64 platform, as it was designed by the same company that made the CPU. It's hard to beat someone at their own game (maybe even unfair as ICC tries to generate worse code for AMD CPUs unless the user hacks the libc to not do such idiocy).

>>51
GCC, a compiler that was origanaly proted from Pascal to C, suffers from some braindad design decisions that have nothing to do with the code generator. It is theoretically possible to improve the backside backend of GCC before the heat death of the universe, but nobody wants to do it because it's easier to bring other compilers (pcc and llvm) up to parr with GCC's level of compatibility.

PORT MY ANUS

>>51
Intel's compiler is intentionally crippled on amd systems -- it will take the slowest, least optimized code path whenever possible.

>>54
Are you sure it's not just that AMD are SLOW AS FUCK!!?

This thread needs more SICP.