re: mzonas

mzonasSays:
That’s pretty awsome man. I got question – what compiler and C++ software is the best? I tried Borland but it somehow doesn’t want to work for me -.- I couldn’t open it with Turbo Pascal I guess …

Firstly, I just want to clarify that my Zombie Sim was written in C#, not C++. I probably could have written it in C++, but it was started as a way to get my hands dirty in C#.

I’m gonna make this a favorite free (or cheap because i’m a poor college student) windows software list. There’s more of these lists than one could shake a stick at, so no one’s gonna care if I throw one more out there.

Development:

For pure windows programming, nothing beats Microsoft Visual Studio. It’s got the power and completeness of the .Net framework with an easy to use IDE that makes building graphical programs a breeze.
Microsoft offers a free express version. Whether its C++, VB, or C# you prefer, they offer it. I have not tried any of the 2008 Express versions, so I can not vouch for them specifically, but I’ve used Visual Studio 6.0, .Net 2003, and .Net 2005 and have liked them all. I have used the Web Developer for HTML coding at my job and it works fine. The only thing it seems to lack is a snippet manager for HTML. It has it for XML, C#, and VB, but not HTML, which is why I use it.

My second favorite development tool is Bloodshed’s Dev-C++. It’s C++ only, and uses the Mingw G++ compiler. I write a lot of quick command line programs with it. Some things that make this an excellent tool include
- fast and lightweight
- do not have to create a project to compile source code
- can be used from a thumb drive with no problems (this is what originally sold me on it)

Last, and no where least, is Ruby. This is different from my other recommendations in that Ruby is a programming language, not a tool. Everyone seems to have a preference as to a favorite ’scripting’ language. Most people seem to like Python. I tried Python, and it wasn’t for me. I don’t know why. It just didn’t stick. I absolutely fell in love with Ruby. I’m also not sure why, but I did. Others like perl. I’ve never coded perl, but I’ve seen some of it’s code, and it looked ugly.
Ruby is beautiful, simple, complete, and powerful. Again though, this is just my taste.
I started playing around with OpenGL in ruby, and was considering rewriting my Zombie Sim in Ruby using OpenGL. I don’t know if I’ll get around to it or not, but I don’t believe it would be too hard, since everything is rectangles in 2D space.
For windows, there’s a one-click installer that will setup everything for you and make it work. It’s currently version 1.8.6, and Ruby just went to 1.8.7, with 1.9 in Beta.
Media:

Windows Media Player Classic owns all for playing single files. Get it with the k-lite codec pack and you can play almost anything under the sun. Any media file that I navigate to and double click on, I have set to open in this. I use the Media Player that comes with Windows to keep a library of my music, I use this to play a single file, or a quick playlist.

Quintessential is not bad. There’s a variety of plugins and skins that make it a WinAmp competitor.
Mediacoder is simple and powerful. It can transcode and combine files. Maybe more, but that’s all I use it for, and that’s worth every penny i paid, and then some. (keep in mind everything mentioned here was legally free)

For recording my own sounds, or capturing streaming music from the web, Audacity is all I need. I’m not a musician, but I do know some that have used this to record their stuff in highschool.

Finally is The Gimp. Along with not being a musician, I’m also not an artist, in any form. I couldn’t even be avant-garde if i tried. But, I’ve moved up in the world from MS Paint. Gimp is my main drawing tool for anything I need.

Messaging:

Pidgin. It’s all I need for everything. AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk, ICQ. I’ve got them all, and now they all look and feel the same. They also don’t destroy my memory usage. I was a hold out for a while when they changed from Gaim and changed to the new Icon set and actually compiled my own version of Pidgin for Ubuntu with the old icon set.

Security (for a lack of a better name):

For (spy/ad/mal)ware, i run a combination of Ad-Aware 2007 and Spybot Search and Destroy. They both work differently and have their strengths and weaknesses. I use the completely free version of Ad-Aware. I’m poor and cannot pay for it.

For viral detections, I’m a fan of AVG Free. Once again, there’s versions I could pay for, but I don’t have that money to spare. Another tool I’ve used, and keep on my thumb drive is Clamwin. It’s slower, but is a good virus scanner, and comes in a portable version.

The best tool for protection though is safe browsing. I’m not talking using Firefox over IE (although I do prefer it). I mean only downloading from trusted sites, researching programs that I may try, not entering my information into every textbox that comes my way, and using common sense.

I do not remember if it was Ad-Aware or AVG, but somewhere in the install process it asks for a license type, just hit cancel and it’ll continue with the free license.

Utilities:

Jkdefrag. I forget how I came across this one, but it came with good reviews. It’s small, lightweight, and fast. It also is supposed to defragment very well, from my understanding. I don’t know enough about various defragmentation algorithms and implementations to make a comment on the performance. It is free however, and does not need to be installed.

[update]

I forgot to mention VirtualBox. It’s my favorite Virtualization software to date. Microsoft offers Virtual PC for free, and it works well until you try Linux, in which case it’s hit or miss. I use Virtualbox to test Linux distro’s before trying them out actually on a computer and sandboxing programs, either because I don’t know if I’ll keep them because they may or may do what I need it too, or because it may or may be malware disguised (and every once in a while I may download some known malware, disconnect the virtual system from the net and my host and then run it just to see what happens).

This list took longer to make than I thought, and I’m not done with all the programs I’d recommend, but this is a good starting point, and a good stopping point for the night. So to answer mzonas’ question,
On windows, for C++, I’d recommend MS Visual Studio and/or Dev-C++.
[update]

re: “thank you so much for this post :) well, I am about to start ruby language. But I got a question: would it be possible to make a game in ruby? You said that you might be recoding your zombie sim to ruby, so I think it’s possible. And that coding of ruby seems similar to PHP which I just own :P”

For the short answer, yes. You can do pretty much anything in Ruby that you can do in C++ or Java, just differently. Text games would obviously be easier than graphical. I’ve done many text-based games in C++. I don’t know any DirectX or OpenGL, so I couldn’t write a graphical game from scratch if my life depended on it.

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