My Brain Hurts!! Please help.

My Brain Hurts!! Please help.

[Paul Harrold]

I have just bought "Teach yourself C in 24 hours" and received the
GNUPro CD with the book.

The trouble is I can't make head or tale of what's on the CD,sure it
installed OK, but as I am a complete beginner in programming, the
contents of the CD mean nothing to me.

What file should I be looking at for a clear and logical introduction to
the contents of the CD. for example what file is the compiler,
assembler, debugger?

I can't be that stupid, I built PC's in my spare time!! 

In short the CD has completely blown my mind I don't know where to
start.

Any clear and concise advice aimed at a complete novice would be greatly
appreciated.
-- 
Paul Harrold
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Re: My Brain Hurts!! Please help.

[Peter Dalgaard BSA]

Paul Harrold <paul@comcraft.demon.co.uk> writes:

> I have just bought "Teach yourself C in 24 hours" and received the
> GNUPro CD with the book.
> 
> The trouble is I can't make head or tale of what's on the CD,sure it
...
> In short the CD has completely blown my mind I don't know where to
> start.
> 
> Any clear and concise advice aimed at a complete novice would be greatly
> appreciated.

Ok. Go and do some horrible deed upon the author of that book, then
download rsxnt...

(look for rsxnt14.zip with you favourite search engine)

The matter is that the gnu-win32 and mingw32 projects are aimed at
porting a set of tools from Unix to win32, not particularly at
providing a comfortable development environment (except for the
comfort of actually being able to port things and make them work). So
it's kind of expected that you know a) what they're supposed to do and
b) what to fix when they don't. To top it off, what you're seeing is
an old beta release, bugs and all. So it's an eminently bad choice for
a complete beginner.

Another option might be to install Linux, and have a standard
Unix-type OS to work with. Don't expect to be productive "in 24
hours", though!

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907

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RE: My Brain Hurts!! Please help.

[Shane Caraveo]

> Paul Harrold <paul@comcraft.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
> > I have just bought "Teach yourself C in 24 hours" and received the
> > GNUPro CD with the book.
> >
> > The trouble is I can't make head or tale of what's on the CD,sure it
> ...
> > In short the CD has completely blown my mind I don't know where to
> > start.
> >
> > Any clear and concise advice aimed at a complete novice would be greatly
> > appreciated.
>

Another option (and I may get shot for this one ;) is that I have seen some
Micro$oft Press books on beginning programming that include the visual c
v1.5 with it.  For the price of the book you get a compiler that at least
you dont have to understand too much about.  Not a greate compiler, and its
only 16bit (from a 1 bit company ;), but good for learning.  I dont know if
their books are good for learning from though.  They also have learning
editions of visual c++ v5 for less than $100.

Shane

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My Brain Hurts a bit less

[Paul Harrold]

>
>Ok. Go and do some horrible deed upon the author of that book, then
>download rsxnt...
>
>(look for rsxnt14.zip with you favourite search engine)
>
>The matter is that the gnu-win32 and mingw32 projects are aimed at
>porting a set of tools from Unix to win32, not particularly at
>providing a comfortable development environment (except for the
>comfort of actually being able to port things and make them work). So
>it's kind of expected that you know a) what they're supposed to do and
>b) what to fix when they don't. To top it off, what you're seeing is
>an old beta release, bugs and all. So it's an eminently bad choice for
>a complete beginner.
>
>Another option might be to install Linux, and have a standard
>Unix-type OS to work with. Don't expect to be productive "in 24
>hours", though!
>

Peter,

Thanks for your reply, I really apreciated it. I did download rsxnt.zip
but it seems, from reading the help file, that I need other files as
well from the net and guess what? It got me all confused again! which
begs the following question, am I barking up the wrong tree? Should I
start by learning another less complicated language? If so, which one?

What I think I really need is a programming environment that is win95
based and has context sensitive help (preferably aimed at begginers,
like me) so that I can get on with learning to write code while the
software I am using to do so, guides me GENTLY through the process. Do
you know of a programme that does this? Is there a demo on the net?


Thanks again,

Regards,

P.S. can you download Linux OS from the net? (or have i got that all
wrong too? Bloody good isn't it, I though I was a bit good at computers
untill I decided to learn to programme, I'll do it if it kills me though
:-] )
-- 
Paul Harrold
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Re: My Brain Hurts!! Please help.

[Earnie Boyd]

As has been stated before, the publisher should not have chosen to 
include the gnu-win32 beta project for it's book.  The true beginner is 
going to be truely lost.  Also, the contents of the CD are old.  I 
suggest that you return the book with the CD and get your money back.  
Then apply the money toward courses in programming.  The C language 
itself is so technical that I would suggest that you don't start with 
it.

-        \\||//
---o0O0--Earnie--0O0o----
-earnie_boyd@hotmail.com-
------ooo0O--O0ooo-------

Check out these great gnu-win32 related sites:
ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/gnu-win32/latest/           (ftp site)
http://www.cygnus.com/pubs/gnupro/                   (Comercial Page)
http://www.cygnus.com/misc/gnu-win32/                (Project Page)
http://www.cygnus.com/ml/gnu-win32                   (Mail Archives)
http://www.itribe.net/virtunix/winhelp-man-pages/    (HTML Man Pages)
http://www.lexa.ru/sos                               (Sergey Okhapkin)
ftp://www.lexa.ru/pub/domestic/sos/                (Sergey's ftp site)
http://www.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp/~colin/gcc.html        (Colin Peters)
http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/~khan/software/gnu-win32/ (Mumit Khan)
http://gnu-win32.paranoia.ru                   (Chuck Bogorad's ports)
ftp://ftp.deninc.com/pub (Den Internet Services - US mirror and ports)
http://www.bestweb.net/~aka/gnu-win32/  (GNU-Win32 Bash Configuration)

>Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 01:28:45 +0000
>To: gnu-win32@cygnus.com
>From: Paul Harrold <paul@comcraft.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: My Brain Hurts!! Please help.
>
>I have just bought "Teach yourself C in 24 hours" and received the
>GNUPro CD with the book.
>
>The trouble is I can't make head or tale of what's on the CD,sure it
>installed OK, but as I am a complete beginner in programming, the
>contents of the CD mean nothing to me.
>
>What file should I be looking at for a clear and logical introduction 
to
>the contents of the CD. for example what file is the compiler,
>assembler, debugger?
>
>I can't be that stupid, I built PC's in my spare time!! 
>
>In short the CD has completely blown my mind I don't know where to
>start.
>
>Any clear and concise advice aimed at a complete novice would be 
greatly
>appreciated.
>-- 
>Paul Harrold
>-
>For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message 
to
>"gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".
>



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