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Closed 10 years ago.
Since you 'should' learn C/C++ and as part of 'learn as much languages as possible', i decided to learn C++ in depth.
My OS is Windows and my question is should i re-install Linux as a dual boot to learn C++ on Linux?
Do i miss something if I develop in C++ only on the Windows platform?
(possible duplicate: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1128050/best-operating-system-for-c-development-and-learning)
Doesn't really matter what platform you write your code on.
If you want to verify that your code is portable, you could install cygwin and gcc as well as visual studio.
Then you could compile with both compilers without having to dualboot
If your goal is simply to learn C++, it doesn't matter what platform you use because C++, as a general purpose programming language, is not platform-specific. You can learn standard C++ on any platform with a decent C++ compiler.
If you want to practice / test on Linux, you can simply create a virtual machine, for example with VirtualBox.
Do i miss something if I develop in
C++ only on the Windows platform?
Valgrind.
Not really if you don't use OS specific calls or libs.
If you are asking about IDEs, compilers etc, that's a metter of your preferences about it.
First of all, learning "as many languges as possible" is less important than learning at least one programming language in depth first.
In my view, you should learn programming on the platform than you are most familiar with. If you are not familiar with Linux and it's features yet, it's no use to start learning programming with it because you wouldn't know what to do. You can also expect the MS documentation to be a bit more consistent than the Linux docs.
Some more things to consider:
You should get a ready-to-use development environment like Eclipe or MS Visual C++ (Windows). Getting the "standard way" with text editor, makefiles, etc. to work is too hard for a beginner, especially on Windows.
If you are going to use .NET on Windows, you have to be aware that the language is slightly different from standard C++. The same is true for C++ Builder, etc. If you are using Visual C++ or an environment based on the GNU compiler, you can program standard C++.
You should try to use C++ standard APIs and libraries like the STL, not MS-proprietary libs, except if you want to stick to Windows.
As long as you stick with cross-platform libraries (e.g. the C++ Standard Library, the Boost C++ Libraries, and the Qt Framework), instead of using platform-specific calls (e.g. the WIN32 API), and also assuming you use a cross-platform build system (e.g. CMake), instead of a platform-specific system (e.g. Visual Studio), then it won't matter. That said, it is much easier to setup a C/C++ development environment on Linux than it is to setup the equivalent development environment on Windows. And, since Linux will not include the "windows.h" header, you will be less likely to invoke Windows-specific features if you develop on Linux.
I recommend that you stick with Windows for a while until you gain some familiarity with the language. Then you can switch to Linux if you like. I say this because on Windows you can use Visual Studio (the Express Edition can be downloaded for free). Its user friendliness will ease some of the pain caused by the initial hurdles when learning C++.
Eventually you should also learn the Linux/Unix way by using gcc, makefiles and an advanced editor like vi/emacs/whatever.. However, this by itself is already challenging stuff, so save it for later and learn C++ first.
If, in the process of learning C and C++, you want to see how the libraries and the system actually work, Linux is the obvious choice as you can take a look at the system's entire source code.
IMHO, that can be quite instructive.
Since with C++ alone you will not be doing much, you should use both OSs (and more) to understand what is available to you in terms of libraries, compilers and IDEs (even development philosophies vary from OS to OS), this is not really important on your first steps into C++, at that stage it is more important which compiler/IDE you select...
Zed above rightly points you out the virtual machine option, VirtualBox is great.
Personally I would advise to avoid using Visual Studio as your first IDE/Compiler, it will add increased complexity and attempt to brainwash you into .net at every chance it gets.
It will also make it hard for you later on to move to other setups...
Start with a simple text editor (Notepad++ on windows) and by using the command line for compilations.
Same question as I asked myself before started learning. That is should I have to have a dual boot? No. If you have installed VC++ with Visual studio you can use Visual Studio provided compiler and is easier to use also. Apart from this you can download and install Cygwin and make sure to check the gcc and its related components. You can launch CYGWIN just like your dos but it provides you UNIX environment to work with inside Windows environment. then just cd to the folder which contain .cpp, and compile using UNIX commands. Simple as that. Happy coding... (For the CPP enthusiasts who land here)...
Related
I am trying to figure out which C/C++ compiler to use. I found this list of C/C++ compilers at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compilers#C.2FC.2B.2B_compilers
I am fairly certain that I want to go with an open source compiler. I feel that if it is open source then it will be a more complete compiler since many programmer perspectives are used to make it better. Please tell me if you disagree.
I should mention that I plan on learning C/C++ mainly to program 2D/3D game applications that will be compatible with Windows, Linux, MAC and iPhone operating systems. I am currently using Windows Vista x64 OS.
First of all, IMHO as a beginner your development environment (IDE) matters a lot more than the compiler.
I think that people place too much emphasis on compiler choice early on. While it is not Java, C++ is meant to be portable.
If the program you're writing only works with specific compilers, you're probably doing the wrong thing or can work a little on making it more portable.
If you get to a point where compiler choice makes a significant performance impact for you, then you've already perfected everything else in your program and you're in a good state and you are also quite advanced in your abilities. We used to teach the differences between compilers at fairly advanced stages in the CS curriculum.
If you use a UNIX based machine (Linux, Mac, actual Linux), then pretty much GNU (g++) is the way to go and is fairly much standard. If it's good enough to compile your OS, it's probably good enough for you. On a mac you can use XCode as your IDE, and it interfaces well with g++. On Linux some people prefer command line tools, though you might like the Eclipse C++ support, it is much better today than it was 3-4 years ago.
Things on Windows are trickier. If you can afford it, have access to, or are eligible for one of the free editions (e.g., via a school), I think the Microsoft Visual C++ Environments (or whatever they are called now) are pretty good for learning and they are used in production. I think there's actually a lightweight visual studio now with an emphasis on C++ that could be a good start. If you don't, you can probably find a distribution of Eclipse that is specific for C++ and includes an implementation of the GNU compilers.
Use gcc and g++ while you're still learning these languages, a big enough task for now. If you need a specialized compiler down the road, you'll want to have much deeper understanding of the language and your problem domain to properly evaluate candidates.
I feel that if it is open source then it will be a more complete compiler since many programmer perspectives are used to make it better.
That's not necessarily true. You could also say that if you use Microsoft's compiler, it will be optimal for Windows, since Microsoft knows best how to optimize a compiler for Windows.
Microsoft has Visual C++ Express Edition which is free and ofcourse includes a nice IDE that's very well suited for Windows development.
But if you're interested in making portable software, look at GCC, which is the default compiler on Linux and which is also available on the Mac. (The iPhone works totally different and requires special tools that only run on Mac OS X). You can get GCC for Windows with Cygwin or MinGW.
Get the Visual Studio Express (easier and quicker IMO, to setup) and learn with it; when you think you know enough about C++ and how "things" work, you could start using something like QT or GCC (with cygwin) and learn to port to different platforms.
For windows u can use CodeBlocks I believe it uses gcc and its pretty user friendly
I strongly suggest going with MinGW.
It is:
Open-source
Available on all major platforms
Comes with standard Win32 headers and libraries
The key to writing portable C++ code is:
Use a cross-platform version control system (subversion is a great choice), because this makes it easier to
Compile and test your code on other platforms early and often
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Closed 8 years ago.
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I want to do some coding in my spare time, but the thing is, I don't want to spend the money on this.
Would the following set of development tools be The Right Thing, or is there something I'm forgetting?
Eclipse for C++
SVN for source control
Qt for UI development (since it's C++, and I believe it's now opened by Nokia)
hudson for continuous integration
I'd like to write a little image processing application that can run on any platform, but the main platform at the moment will be Windows with a possible movement to the Mac-- hence all the cross-platform tools.
Is there anything really obvious I'm forgetting? Like something like fxcop for style checking in C++?
If I use any libraries, I'd like to avoid GPL libraries; if things go south with my current employer, I'll want to monetize this.
Microsoft Visual C++ Express is free and easily the best IDE for Windows. Furthermore, you can use it to work on cross-platform code - it more depends on writing standards-adhering code and using portable libraries.
If you want to write cross-platform code, I recommend a cross-platform build tool. I use CMake, which generates Visual Studio solutions on Windows, but there are others too, such as SCons.
As for libraries, it depends on what exactly you need to do. Qt is an excellent GUI library. libpng/libjpeg and others are good for loading/saving images at a low level, but there are probably other higher-level image libraries as well.
[edit] A response to the comment about MSVC and Qt:
A quick search brings up Trolltech's Qt Visual Studio Integration page:
Qt Visual Studio .NET Integration
A comment points out that this is actually not free (a free addon is available at this link, but this runs Qt designer outside of Visual Studio. Also, the Express version of Visual Studio does not support plugins.
For coding specifically in Qt there is another new IDE created by Qt: Qt Creator. I've heard good things about it, and it is also portable across Windows, Linux, and Mac.
I detect procrastination (something I'm often guilty of) - just write some code - you can always add tools as you go along.
The problem with questions with phrases like "what's better" is that it's really hard to determine what's right in a specific situation and maybe impossible what's "better".
Said that, I use Eclipse CDT sucessfully as an IDE on Linux. I use frameworks like ACE/TAO to create code that is highly portable.
I know that QT is a very good UI framework. KDE is built on top of KDE and if you use KDE/Linux then you may also want to look at KDevelop, a C++ IDE that has many users.
In the end I believe that you and only you can figure out whats best for you to use. Make sure you check the alternatives and then make an educated decision.
for c++ there are a few more freewares available such as codeblocks and devcpp. I find eclipse very heavy on the machine.
There are many tools that make the difference:
A C++ compiler ... (it wasn't in your list)
doxygen
STLfilt (which is a must have when programming in C++)
A UT framework (CxxTests, boost.test, Fructose, google.test, ...)
something to manage the compilation chain (scons, aap, (b)jam, cmake, ...) -- I've no idea what eclipse is using.
Source control: git. It's not as diffucult as people make it seem. I'm an svn newbie and I still managed to learn the basics of git for use in everyday life! There are about 4 or 5 basic commands that will get you going in no time. Read the official git tutorial
Regarding IDE's, there are a few choices
Microsoft Visual C++ Express Edition (free lite version)
Eclipse with CDT
QtCreator. (Since you're using Qt for the GUI)
Personally I have used Eclipse+CDT for a number of projects. Paired with wxWidgets it has provided me with enough to keep myself pretty much crossplatform (which I think is a big plus).
Also QT has some interesting releases with an IDE now, make sure you check it out: http://www.qtsoftware.com/products/developer-tools
Like earlier suggestion, just start coding, you will eventually find out what is the appropriate mix for you. It varies greatly between individuals what is the "best" IDE or mix of command line tools, etc.
Eclipse CDT is making huge strides, and even organizations that were unx tools only are now finally joining the IDE bandwagon. Considering downloading a current milestone, not the official release.
If you're using windows, don't use Eclipse directly, find a third-party distribution that already has all the GNU tools in it (I forgot the name, I can look it up).
Once you switch to mac it's easier, but make sure to install xcode to get your GNU tools.
If you are using svn - VisualSVNServer is an excellent free GUI based way to setup and administer your SVN repository, definitely worth checking out as it means you have little/no messing about with config files etc. to change your repository.
Regarding version control - Subversion is pretty much standard and is very well supported. From what I've heard, Git is more powerful but harder to use; it's worth a look for a new one-man project, since you wouldn't have the support and retraining concerns that other projects would have.
Regarding IDE, since Visual C++ Express is currently the highest-voted answer - I've used both Eclipse and Visual C++ Express. I don't have a whole lot of experience with Visual C++ Express, so it might have features that I've overlooked, but from what I've been able to compare, Eclipse offers a lot more features. I tried to list its more impressive features in this answer; from what I've been able to see, Visual C++ Express doesn't have any of the features listed there. Eclipse is slower and more resource-intensive, but with a fast enough desktop, its extra features are more than worth it.
In terms of version control, use git and throw your project on GitHub or Gitorious. There's really no reason to use Subversion anymore, due to its painful branching and merging, and lack of a distributed model.
See this link here for why Git is better than X:
http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/
There's also no point in using Sourceforge or GNU Savannah, as the Git front-end sites have much more valuable features and are easier to use.
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Closed 9 years ago.
Saludos a todos en stackoverflow.com!!
So... I'm a C++ newbie currently taking the subject of Data Structures, and I want to consult something with you guys:
Since I started studying Systems Engineering, I've been using the last version of Dev-C++ for all my programming projects. It has done it's job well so far, but it has a FATAL flaw... trying to debug your code in it it's just... awfully painful!! Everytime you activate the debug mode you have to cross your fingers and hope it doesn't crash in your face just before the variable you are watching even changes.
Then, I though about using Visual-C++ from Microsoft, as it is free too; however, I asked my teacher and told me not to use it in the course, as it is not standard (compiled programs in it will only work for Windows); we are required to make code that can be compiled both in a Windows and Linux environment, and once compiled in any, being able to use the application on both environments.
So people, I want you to please give me advice: Which C++ compiling software out there has a strong and/or stable debugging mode, implements the standard compiler (is it called g++, by the way??), and it's hopefully free???
Thanks for your attention. Gracias y hasta luego ^_^ (BTW, happy first post!!! ^o^)
There is an implementation of g++ and GDB ( the Gnu Debugger ) for windows called Mingw that works very well. Though since I'm guessing you're also looking for a graphical IDE / debugger, I'd point you at Eclipse. The C Development Tools for eclipse include an excellent interface to the Mingw build tools and GDB. Also, on your comment about a compiled program being used on both Windows and *nix, this is not possible as far as I know.
It depends what you mean by 'standard'. You're going to have to compile your code on linux and windows anyway. There is no way to create and executable that will run on both. Just use VS to compile and debug on windows, then make sure it also compiles and runs under GCC on linux.
I think he just wants you to use the same compiler on both, so you don't have to deal with differences between compilers. I think that's good for you. Writing code that can compile on multiple compilers is important because it shows you what parts of the standard really are standard.
Code::Blocks - it's free, it's cross-platform, it's pretty good. You can download a package consisting of the CB IDE, the MinGW C++ compiler and the gdb debugger. Installation is very straightforward.
It sounds like you're asking for an IDE ( Integrated Dev Environment ).
Eclipse might be good for you. It's supported on both Windows and Linux.
http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/
In terms of compilers themselves GCC is your best bet. It is a compiler in the purest sense of the word though it doesn't have a native interface to it.
I would be looking at finding a good environment to develop in that could attach to it.
Straying from that my personal preference in IDE's right now is eclipse, but that is really a personal thing.
If you use only the standards features of C++, you can use Visual Studio Express C++. Your are not obligated to use the windows only extension of the compiler: MFC, ATL, Wizards, etc.
But if you want to make something portable then trying to target both compilers (GCC and VS) is really a better exercise anyway.
Also recently Nokia released a new multiplataform ide QtCreator, it is a first version but at least it deserve to be taken in consideration.
MinGW is pretty good as #Colfax state. Consider using ddd with Cygwin which makes using gdb somewhat easier. See this SO question
But wait...isn't Qt 4.5 released as LGPL now making that a great free tool? See here
As a linux guy, I think the best experience comes with GVIM as editor and Mingw as
programming environment. GCC is the standard, but LLVM-GCC is very promising and comes with a Mingw build ready for use in windows.
I use DevC++ from when i was starting learn to programm. And i love it. Just can't change to another compiler, so i use wxDevC++ a still maintained version of DevC++.
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Closed 11 years ago.
What is the best C++ IDE for a *nix envirnoment? I have heard the C/C++ module of Eclipse is decent as well as Notepad++ but beyond these two I have no real idea. Any thoughts or comments?
On Ubuntu, some the IDEs that are available in the repositories are:
Kdevelop
Geany
Anjuta
There is also:
Eclipse (Recommended you don't install from repositories, due to issues with file/folder permissions)
Code::blocks
And of course, everyone's favourite text-based editors:
vi/vim
emacs
Its true that vim and emacs are very powerful tools, but the learning curve is very steep..
I really don't like Eclipse that much, I find it buggy and a bit too clunky.
I've started using Geany as a bare-bones but functional and usable IDE. It has a basic code-completion feature, and is a nice, clean [Gnome] interface.
Anjuta I tried for a day, didn't like it at all. I didn't find it as useful as Geany.
Kdevelop and code::blocks get a bunch of good reviews, but I haven't tried them. I use gnome, and I'm yet to see a KDE app that looks good in gnome (sorry, I'm sure its a great program).
If only bloodshed dev-c++ was released under linux. That is a fantastic (but windows-only) program. You could always run it under Wine ;)
To a degree, it comes down to personal preference. My advice is to investigate Kdevelop, Geany and code::blocks as a starting point.
As a programmer who has been writing code under linux for many years, I simply cannot seem to move away from using Vim for writing code.
Once you learn it, and learn some of its more advanced features (Code Folding, how to use ctags, how to work with multiple buffers effectively, etc) moving to another editor is very hard - as everything else seems to be missing features that you're used to.
The only other editor with a superset of vim's features is emacs. I highly recommend learning one or the other - and if you have questions, don't hesitate to ask here or in #emacs or #vim on irc.freenode.net - there's a very large and helpful community that will help you learn what extensions or commands best suit the software editing problems that you're facing.
[Edit: A comment noted that "vim isn't an IDE", I agree. I don't like the IDE moniker because it means a gui with a project manager and a bunch of drop down boxes. I like to use the terminology "Good Tools". See Ted Leung's writings on the matter]
I would recommend CodeBlocks.
Highlights:
Open Source! GPLv3, no hidden costs.
Cross-platform. Runs on Linux, Mac, Windows (uses wxWidgets).
Written in C++. No interpreted languages or proprietary libs needed.
Extensible through plugins
Compiler:
Multiple compiler support:
GCC (MingW / GNU GCC)
MSVC++
Digital Mars
Borland C++ 5.5
Open Watcom
...and more
I'm surprised noone has mentioned Qt Creator, as it's available in most repositories, quite small in size and yet does most things I need very well.
I just use Emacs.
Emacs is a fantastic, stay-out-of-my-way-but-be-able-to-do-everything kind of IDE. See this other related question: Using Emacs as an IDE
My vote is KDevelop (I wish I had more points so I can "vote up", so I could just agree with others indirectly than comment).
I've been using Eclipse for about couple years now for personal use, convincing myself that "since IBM donated it, it must be good", but then I've discovered KDevelop and never turned back. Because I'm quite spoiled with Microsoft Visual Studio for professional use, thus KDevelop felt the most comfortable to me.
I want to enjoy programming as a hobby, not spend time looking up what ctrl-k-k and ctrl-k-b does. Like others has mentioned, whatever "feels right" to them is the best IDE. For me, KDevelop feels the most comfortable because I can concentrate on coding (I could probably remap the keys to other IDE's to make it feel like VS, but as mentioned, I rather invest my time coding, which is more fun).
KDevelop is nice, especially if you run KDE. It supports many languages, as an added bonus. I've found its embedded terminal really useful.
If you're coming from Windows & Visual Studio, you might find Code::Blocks meets your expectations.
That was my experience; I tried a few others first, but they all seemed to expect me to do a lengthy tutorial before I could start doing anything interesting - and with a dozen IDEs to try, that could take days.
With Code::Blocks there were no hoops to jump through, and very little mandatory cruft to learn before I could be productive. I still prefer Visual Studio, but Code::Blocks can open my Visual Studio projects, and it doesn't seem to want me to waste any time, so it's the winningmost *nix IDE for me.
I use the NetBeans C++ plugin and it's superb. I come from a Visual Studio background and the Netbeans project management is very similar. I tried KDevelop but found it a little flaky (this was 12 months ago, so it is probably better now).
I also struggled with dependencies using KDevelop - i.e. where a program requires a raft of libs to be built first - but Netbeans made this simple.
The only complaint is that being a Java app, it isn't particularly fast - very noticeable when running under VMWare.
Simply put, Netbeans. You have to try it out. It's so good. It's much better than Eclipse with the CDT plugin.
Netbeans has gotten some pretty good reviews for its C++ support: http://www.netbeans.org/features/cpp/
I've never used Netbeans or Eclipse for C++ development, but it's worth looking at.
I was a VisualStudio + VA-X user before I switched to ubuntu, and needed good auto completion and function navigation features in any IDE.
I have tried Netbeans,Eclipse CDT,CodeBlocks,Geany,Anjuta, KDevelop and finally settled for KDevelop since that was the closest I could get to VS+VA-X.
Eclipse & NetBeans are too heavy & sluggish for my taste. Most of the other IDEs have buggy/incomplete/dumb auto completion & other features; or they want to take control of your code and needs to be imported into projects; or they put 101 files in your source folder. Only KDevelop allowed me to have a simple link to my src folder and let me work. auto completion is not brilliant, but better than the others.
KDevelop doesn't blend well with my Gnome, but I can live with it ;)
I really like CodeLite. Check out it's feature page.
Personally, I agree with the kDevelop crowd as well. Eclipse felt a bit bulky and mildly unstable. Something about kDeveloper just always feel right.
Ultimate++ [http://www.ultimatepp.org/index.html]
[edit]
It does have it's own C++ class libs (as Hernan points out), but nothing stops you from using any other class libs like the SDL, or you can roll your own. You can even use boost if you like, but I must say I find some of the supplied classes & techniques to be more useful.What I appreciate most is it's brilliant integration with the debugger and very complete context-sensitive editor. It uses the standard compiler & debugger (gcc, g++, gdb) on Linux and the MS compiler/debugger on that platform.The only (very small) gripe I have is the home-made names for projects (called Nest's & so forth). That is unnecessary and may even be off-putting to serious developers, but they are only names & I find I can easily ignore it.
I asked this question before to experience Linux users and they always say Vim and automake. I use Vim as my default editor in Linux and after a while it becomes intuitive. I learned it by working through some small examples while learning C++ so I could learn both at the same time.
At my old job we used SlickEdit for C++ development under Debian. It's cross-platform and quite powerful.
It's not free, though.
The problem with most IDEs is that they want to have a certain degree of control on how the project is organized, and this could be a problem if you have to work on that project with other people. In my experience this leads to two series of related problems:
If you start a project in a particular IDE, they will layout for you a particular directory structure, file organization, file naming convention, build system, etc. Of course most of these options are customizable, but it's not always possible to adhere to specific conventions which you might be required to follow. Projects with a complex build system might be difficult to implement from within the IDE. Moreover, the project might not be suitable for external, independent modification; so for instance, if you are planning to write an opensource application, avoid making the IDE a dependency for the project.
If you import a project started elsewhere, chances are it won't be very easy to use all the features provided by the IDE. You will have to figure out how to hook the build system, the debugger (as the binaries might not be where expected), etc. This is especially true for large and complex projects.
The reason why these ares not a problem under Windows is that Visual Studio is a de-facto standard. Under *nix there's a tendency not to impose particular tools/editors when developing a project collaboratively, and this is why these "cross-IDE communication" problems arise.
As a final note, if you learn, say, kdevelop or netbeans, you might have problems if one day you have to work on a machine where installing those is problematic (e.g. you might not have a Java runtime available and you might not be allowed to install it). If you learn (say) Vim + plugins, you are way safer: you can keep your configuration as a .zip file on your webserver and be pretty sure that Vim will always be available everywhere.
I can't really vouch for the Eclipse module, but that might be attributed to the fact that I'm on Windows and have nearly no idea what I'm doing.
Can't go wrong with your favorite text editor though.
Eclipse isn't bad, but you have to do things Eclipse's way. Eclipse has some built in ideas on directory layout. For a new project, Eclipse is a reasonable choice. Importing an existing project into Eclipse may require some restructuring.
I used to use Eclipse under QNX for C++. The QNX people actually developed the C++ capability, so QNX would have an IDE.
Emacs works for simple things but I use Eclipse for any larger project.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I teach a sort of "lite" C++ programming course to novices ("lite" meaning no pointers, no classes, just plain old C, plus references and STL string and vectors). Students have no previous experience in programming, so I believe that using an interactive debugger would help them understand program flow, variables, and recursion.
The course is taught in Linux. Teaching them to use gdb is just overkill (they will not use nor understand most features). I just need something simple but easy to use: to see at which line the program is now, what is in the stack (local variables, previous calls, etc.). I look something similar to old Turbo Pascal or Turbo C++ Borland's debugger, or Visual Studio debugger.
Thank you,
ddd is a graphical front-end to gdb that is pretty nice. One of the down sides is a classic X interface, but I seem to recall it being pretty intuitive.
You could try using Insight a graphical front-end for gdb written by Red Hat
Or if you use GNOME desktop environment, you can also try Nemiver.
You may want to check out Eclipse CDT. It provides a C/C++ IDE that runs on multiple platforms (e.g. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.). Debugging with Eclipse CDT is comparable to using other tools such as Visual Studio.
You can check out the Eclipse CDT Debug tutorial that also includes a number of screenshots.
Qt Creator, apart from other goodies, also has a good debugger integration, for CDB, GDB and the Symnbian debugger, on all supported platforms. You don't need to use Qt to use the Qt Creator IDE, nor do you need to use QMake - it also has CMake integration, although QMake is very easy to use.
You may want to use Qt Creator as the IDE to teach programming with, consider it has some good features:
Very smart and advanced C++ editor
Project and build management tools
QMake and CMake integration
Integrated, context-sensitive help system
Excellent visual debugger (CDB, GDB and Symbian)
Supports GCC and VC++
Rapid code navigation tools
Supports Windows, Linux and Mac OS X
Perhaps it is indirect to gdb (because it's an IDE), but my recommendations would be KDevelop. Being quite spoiled with Visual Studio's debugger (professionally at work for many years), I've so far felt the most comfortable debugging in KDevelop (as hobby at home, because I could not afford Visual Studio for personal use - until Express Edition came out). It does "look something similar to" Visual Studio compared to other IDE's I've experimented with (including Eclipse CDT) when it comes to debugging step-through, step-in, etc (placing break points is a bit awkward because I don't like to use mouse too much when coding, but it's not difficult).