What is the easiest C++ IDE for students, non-programmers? [closed]

Question

I teach programming at secondary school: this is our current status and I would appreciate any suggestions:

• We have programmers club for advanced students. We develop in MSVC# (even commercially) and NetBeans, everything works fine
• However, two thirds of the class are not developers: they are otherwise oriented, their job will probably not be in IT
• According to our school agenda, we HAVE TO teach them some basics
• So in the first year of their studies, we teach them something like "programming for dummies" to give them time to decide what they really want to do (programmers club requires to do MUCH homework)
• The language HAVE TO BE C++ (for many reasons). Currently they develop in C++ Builder 6.0, which is slow and buggy in our school network.

So what would be the best solution for those students? The requirements are fast, reliable and very easy to undestand IDE. Console output is sufficient, something like "editor and play button". Visual programming and debugging tools are not required. The IDE should be free, preferably running on Windows.

My favorite was MSVC 2008 Express - it is really fast and pretty simple. But C++/CLI is not C++ (managed code is not the basics), so this is not an option. Any other suggestions?

Answer 1

You said it right there: go with Visual C++ Express.

Just because you can use it to write C++/CLI projects doesn't mean you have to. Just create ordinary Win32 console apps and you'll be using plain old C++, nothing managed whatsoever.

To clarify: C++/CLI is what you get when you create a Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation or some other type of .Net-based application. If you create a Win32 Console Application, you will be using ordinary C++ without any of the managed Microsoft extensions.