For people with no programming experience, one of the most difficult parts of C programming is setting up your environment. Your environment will consist of 3 things:
- A text editor, for writing code.
- A compiler, for creating executable programs from your code.
- A terminal, for running the executable programs.
CodeBunk
Just use CodeBunk. It’s the easiest and fastest way to get started. Just make sure you set the language to C in the top left corner. When you want to compile and run your program, just click the run button. Super easy. The only downside is you cannot save your code, and you can only have one file at a time.
Using an IDE
If you would like a development environment with an editor, compiler, and terminal all in one place, you want an IDE. There are a lot of options, but I will name a few that I know of:
- Visual Studio – Windows only and full of features that you will probably never use.
- NetBeans – Cross platform and pretty easy to use. This is good for Linux.
- XCode – Mac users only.
Text Editors
If you are putting together a set of tools, start with a text editor:
- Visual Studio Code – cross platform and probably the most feature rich code editor I have come across.
- notepad – Ready to use out of the box on any Windows installation. Pretty limited in features.
- notepad++ – Code highlighting and formatting tools.
- GEdit – Pretty much the Linux equivalent of notepad++. May or may not come installed on your system.
Compilers
Next, choose a compiler:
- MSBuild – this is included in Visual Studio.
- GCC – The GNU Cross Compiler, comes with most Linux systems and is also available on Windows via MinGw and Cygwin.
Terminals
For terminals, you can use one of the following:
- Command Prompt – Windows
- Unix Shell – Both Linux and Mac
What I Use
When writing these lessons, I use CodeBunk. Professionally, I do most on my development on either Windows or Linux. I typically use the following tools:
- Windows: Visual Studio Code, MSBuild, Visual Studio Command Prompt.
- Linux: Visual Studio Code, GCC, GNOME Shell(variation of Unix shell).
Mobile Platforms
I do not recommend using a mobile platform for development, but if you have no other option, you can use CodeBunk in your mobile browser.