Hi everybody,

I just have one question right now:

First of all, my Windows XP is, well, old. I mean about 6 years old, and I am planning on investing in a new PC before long, (with some luck I will start teaching English in Japan pretty soon so I can eventually afford one ). My XP had issues an out of date graphics card or something, and I couldn't do any of the XNA tutorials. That said, while I wait I really want to continue working with C++ (the language I started learning, feel comfortable with introductory concepts and even started doing some simple object-oriented programming).

My question: is there an IDE and/or a way of compiling/running C++ programs on a Macbook Pro WITHOUT having to register as a developer with Apple? That sounds like a pain to deal with...and I don't want to sign anything that lets Apple own anything I might make someday, although I doubt they want anything I have to offer I have searched around for a while but am having difficulty getting anything done. If worse comes to worse, until I get a new monster machine and Visual C++, I could just practice writing code with pen and paper, doing exercises from a textbook that I have...

Anyways, thank you for your time and help. : )

You need an Apple developer account to download Xcode and the OS X SDK, but that's fine --- it's free, and Apple is not entitled to any piece of software that you make with it. You also need to register Microsoft Visual Studio Express with Microsoft on Windows, let me remind you. ;)

Xcode is a pretty well-liked development tool, so you should have fun with it. The only thing that sucks is you'll need to learn Obj-C to get down'n'dirty with the native APIs, which has significantly less tutorials.