to Mike:
C++ <i>is</i> C.

Man, screw my internal organs! Liver? Who needs a liver?

I can understand saying: "No, this compiler doesn't support C++, it isn't the right one for you" or "Nah, don't use those .h header files, they're outdated, and some present security risks in certain applications," but to say that the heart and soul of a language should go out the window, that doesn't fly with me.

Bloodshed Dev is an excellent place to start, though I do like the freedom of GCC run on the command-line in Linux (no complicated file managers, etc, just open up Joe or Emacs and type it in, save with a .cpp file extension, and a.out)

While nearly 90% of commercial business software is written in BASIC, and the learning curve for C/C++ is more demanding on the student, I see no reason why a person of average intelligence (or above and beyond, I'm not attempting to categorize anyone here, especially not based on viewing a single forum post) should have any notable difficulty in learning the syntax. If anything, it makes it that much more difficult to break the numerous bad habits reenforced by BASIC's superlative ease.

To the guy selling copies of "Elements of Style" on his Amazon account: I took a year's worth of college courses designed with the specific aim of getting an English in Journalism degree and maintained a 4.0 gpa. None of those courses were in any way beneficial to my quest for a degree in computer programming, other than providing an extensive vocabulary with which to criticize people for their grammatical atrocities and spelling butcheries on the internet. Yes, I ended a sentance with a prepositional phrase. Don't try to justify your classifications of other people with something so pointed and underhanded as a reccomendation toward a dictionary.