Free C++ Compilers

I know there are a lot of C++ compilers availiable and the best free compiler I've used is code:blocks. I know there is a quite a few compilers that could be better than code:blocks. But I would be unaware of it since I'm happy with code:blocks. Although Code:BLocks has a friendly user interface it is a little bit more complicated to get everything running. A good compiler for a programmer who has good C++ knowledge.
You can get code:blocks from this website
www.codeblocks.org/
Dev C++ is also a very good compiler and I have had very good results with this compiler and is why I recomend it for begginers to C++. It has a very easy and friendly user interface and is easy for anyone.
You can get Dev C++ from there website which is located at
www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

Stupid C++ Tricks

I recently came across this C++ Soup post, which demonstrates some cute C++ tricks. Now by cute, I mean stupid, similar to Dave Letterman’s segment “stupid pet tricks” (you can google that if you’ve never seen this). It’s a useless language exercise with little practical application except to show how obfuscated one can make C++. Are there any benefit to these tricks? Lets explore.

Now all C++ programmers do this (myself included) just to see if they understand template programming, so keep in mind that this is NOT a critique of this particular author, who I’m sure is a C++ Ninja. It’s just a recent example that triggered this rant. No, just have a look at half the boost libraries to see this thinking taken to the extreme. Or even the C++ standard library; does anyone really use the cumbersome std::for_each function or any of that bind stuff? They all feel like they’re unfinished ideas: they’re onto something, but they’re not quite there yet.

These (what I’m calling) C++ tricks are often segments of templated C++ code that push generic programming to solve some kind of basic problem, that is typically solved using simpler (but more verbose) code. A trick author is often amazed (and proud) at how small or flexible the code is, but hopefully realizes that the amount of work or expertise required to make the trick outweighs most benefits. The code is then shelved. Lets cut this silliness out.

Furthermore, most application developers will steer clear (or be ignorant) of such tricks, and popular C++ libraries do well to not require such expertise from their users.

Is there any benefit to these tricks? Yes, only to show what could be possible with C++.

C++ is an extremely powerful language, giving you compile time dynamic/generic programming with no loss of runtime performance. No other language does this so fully and completely, and C++ is still the only language option in many demanding areas.

However, the language needs to grow, and it needs to grow fast. We must look at what these tricks are trying to do, and then think how we can change the language to do the same thing in a sane, logical fashion. C++0x is working on this with lambdas, type inference, better error reporting and some other niceties. But we needed these features yesterday, and get people using them. Lets steal more features from other languages. Lets turn up the meta programming capabilities so we can extend the language without meta-compilers and preprocessors, which until now provide the bulk of the useful new language extensions.

There is no reason why C++ can’t offer easy to use and powerful compile-time dynamic programming, resulting in code that looks like a dynamic scripting language, but with safer types and kick-ass performance, memory use and code size.

How to load the PNG image?

hmm, to load the PNG image, most people use libpng. But, wait.. But WAIT!! That library is “NOT SAFE FOR DIRECT USE”. The API is Awful, yeah.. It's Right. If you don’t believe me, spend a day with it, struggle through it, THEN check out OpenIL. This is an example of how DIFFICULT using libpng directly is.

#include 
#include 

#undef _UNICODE
#include "il.h"

#pragma comment( lib, "DevIL.lib" )

// Wow. DevIL is amazing.

// From http://gpwiki.org/index.php/DevIL:Tutorials:Basics

// The library consists of three sub-libraries:
//  * IL - main DevIL library. It allows you to load and save images to files. Every function in this library have 'il' prefixed to their name.
//  * ILU - this library contains functions for altering images. Every function in this library have 'ilu' prefixed to their name.
//  * ILUT - this library connects DevIL with OpenGL. Every function in this library have 'ilut' prefixed to their name.

int main()
{
 ilInit();
 printf("DevIL has been initialized\n");

 // Loading an image
 ILboolean result = ilLoadImage( "4px.png" ) ;

 if( result == true )
 {
   printf("the image loaded successfully\n");
 }
 else
 {
   printf("The image failed to load\n" ) ;

   ILenum err = ilGetError() ;
   printf( "the error %d\n", err );
   printf( "string is %s\n", ilGetString( err ) );
 }

 int size = ilGetInteger( IL_IMAGE_SIZE_OF_DATA ) ;
 printf("Data size:  %d\n", size );
 ILubyte * bytes = ilGetData() ;

 for( int i = 0 ; i < size; i++ )
 {
   // see we should see the byte data of the image now.
   printf( "%d\n", bytes[ i ] );
 }
}