Xref: news2.mv.net comp.os.msdos.djgpp:3960
From: "A. Sinan Unur" <asu1 AT cornell DOT edu>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Newbie question
Date: 16 May 1996 12:58:44 GMT
Organization: Cornell University
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To: mcoady AT generation DOT net
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mcoady AT generation DOT net (mcoady) wrote:
>	Hi.  I know very little about programming, having done some 
>BASIC and SP/K many years ago.  I was considering trying to learn some C 
>and/or C++ by buying one of the many books available on the subject, but 
>I realized that this would be somewhat useless without having the 
>language available on my computer.  I just learned about djgpp and I am 
>wondering.... well, is this what I need?  My knowledge is sufficiently 
>basic that I'm not too clear on what a compiler is (for example).  If I 
>download djgpp and struggle through the manual and pick up a book on 
>C/C++, will I be able to do some programming in these languages?  Sorry 
>if my question isn't too clear, and thanks in advance for any 
>suggestions.
>
>Mike
>
well, i guess most people would answer "no" to this question. however, being a 
newbie myself, i would not agree with that. my whole programming experience consists 
of basic and z80 assembly on my spectrum back when i was in high school (12 years 
ago). since then i had not programmed anything when 6 months ago i saw some person 
from finland mention djgpp on his web page. a months or so after that i realized 
that v2 was out and i downloaded the whole thing. right after that i bought a book 
called "programming in ansi C" published by sams (i cannot remember the author right 
now, but he is great). the important thing is, i did not jump straight into trying 
to compile stuff with djgpp. i spent a lot of time going through the docs (djgpp 
docs are supplied in a special hypertext format which is not especially friendly for 
people who are used to windows), the FAQ and working through examples -- both those 
in the book and those supplied with djgpp. when i thought i was ready to do 
something on my own, i choose to write something that would be useful, managable and 
real. so i wrote a naive ascii-to-html converter. (it works but every day i look at 
it i discover something really ugly -- i guess that's the way it should be though.) 
before you download the whole thing, visit http://www.delorie.com to see if the info 
there helps you.

anyway, let me not waste too much bandwidth (by the way, comp.os.msdos.djgpp folks, 
if i should not have posted this, please let me know. i won't do it again.) in 
short, the important thing in my opinion is to try on your own to learn how to use 
the tools and set yourself some realistic targets and achive them.

finally, thanks to everybody who is involved in the development of djgpp.

sinan.