the economics of charity

[Wingsolution]

Or why there's not enough good resources for teaching yourself a skill online.

This topic was brought to you by my desire to learn to program, paired with my inability to earn money to pay for schooling and/or a lack of free compilers that I could find... And yes, I am aware of the various tuition programs out there, but I have the same lack of get-up-and-go that keeps me from finding a better job... though part of that is the whole economic mess from concentration of wealth, and greed overwriting moral business practices. Ignore the digression.

What I'm really trying to do is find out if anyone out there knows of a free compiler, hopefully for a programming language that has tutorials(free) to help me teach myself how to make simple programs before I run out of steam and give up. I'm currently using gamemaker studio, but the free version only allows 20 sprites, and I'm trying to make a simple flash card type program, to teach myself katakana... I lack the finances to make traditional flash cards.

In an interesting note, you can apparently get the package to make apps for the iphone free, but I don't have an iphone, so I can't make something for myself with that. There is no such thing as a free lunch, so the cost of the development software is payed for by the people who buy iphones, a hidden cost.

Thoughts, comments, links to resources I may have missed?

[fridgey]

I almost feel like I'm missing something here, but Microsoft's VS Express, GCC/MingGW, and Eclipse are all free compilers for major programming languages, and there are quite a few others out there as well.

[zedd]

Not sure what you want to do, but Python has free versions and free tutorials online to teach yourself. another with free versions is java.

[Isengrim]

All the major languages have a free compiler and free learning resources.

Based on my experience teaching my brother to be a programmer there are a couple of questions that you should think about.

1) What do you want to do? or Why do you want to be a programmer?
2) Do you have any small projects and maybe a medium size project already in mind?
3) Are the projects web, desktop/laptop, or mobile applications?

If you've got questions I'll answer them as best I can.

[Stealth_Dragon]

As a good general purpose language I would suggest Racket
With a tutorial at http://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/

If all you really want is a flashcard program Wikipedia has a good sized list of them some are free some are not

[zebuddha]

if it's just to create simple little tools etc., a lil' program I've found that's great is AutoHotkey (autohotkey.com iirc). No compiling necessary (but it's possible if you want to make the program(s) standalone), great help/manual, great community (and very n00b friendly), and simple to start with. I actually use it for work quite often to make lil' macro-like tools (with or without GUI) instead of other programming options because it's real quick and easy to make something from the get-go.

Aside from that, I'd recommend keeping in mind if you intend to make something that only you will run on your own PC, or if it's also for others and/or for other platforms. e.g. Java is, pretty much, platform independent (will run on any system that can run the Java Platform) - same with any web-based "language" - e.g. javascript, php, etc.. On the other hand, laguages such as VB (Visual Basic), C++/C# are more or less limited to what they can run on (or have to be written/programmed separately for each platform).

Final point: the more you CAN do with a language, usually the steeper the learning curve - i.e. you can do pretty much anything you want with C#, but it'll take a while before you manage to do anything, while you'll manage to make something quick with VB, but you'll run into limitations after a while. In terms of beginner motivation - specially if you're like me and easily demotivated - I'd recommend starting with one of the "easier" languages, and once you have a more or less general idea of how things work, and you're comfortable making little things quickly, then step over to a more complex language. It won't be as daunting that way if you have a grasp of the underlying principles, even if the programming (language) itself is different.

Anyhow, whatever you end up doing, have fun

[Spec8472]

I'd suggest looking at

Code: Select all

(http://www.codecademy.com/learn), or [Khan Academy](https://www.khanacademy.org/) for free learning tools. 

As for free 'compilers' - I think you need to step back for a bit and think about development tools. They're the most important bit, what your compiler is (or interpreter or runtime or whatever), is dependant upon your language and possibly platform of choice. 

You can write most applications using nothing more than a basic text editor. For many though, a completely dumb editor is the editor of last resort. 
Going up the chain of complexity, you have syntax aware editors - for example Notepad++ can recognise the syntax of many languages, and provide some level of basic error detection. 

At the top of the stack, you have full-blown Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). They allow you to track all the files within your project, and often provide additional levels of assistance - for example finding code that refers to a non-existant piece of code, or finding where you are not calling that other piece of code correctly. 
Depending on the development environment, it may also provide debugging tools - allowing you to set 'breakpoints' and step into the code as it's running and examine the working state. 

You'll find free (as in beer) editors and IDEs for all or most languages and platforms, although there may be restrictions in functionality for the free versions of commercial tools. 

All you have to do is pick the language(s) you want to try.

[Wingsolution]

I want to thank everyone for your help. I just moved, and have to help my mom set her business back up, so I won't be able to take any time to work on programming for a while. Plus I have two projects I have to finish by march, and I've barely started the bigger one. Sorry about the late reply but I just got internet back after the move(no smartphone/laptop/time to go to library). once I've got sufficint free time, I'll definitely dip into the resources here, thanks.