Re: Trying to learn programing

[Shug Boabby]

Hi Cameron.

first of all, Emacs is an editor but not a compiler for languages like
C. the program you installed before probably has a compiler built it
(as it was able to compile your hello world program).

But fear not, Emacs is part of a much larger project called the GNU
project:
  http://www.gnu.org/
and it does indeed have a free C++ compiler:
  http://gcc.gnu.org/

I do not have Windows so I cannot tell exactly what your problem is,
though I suspect you have maybe downloaded the source code for Emacs,
not the binary itself (but do not delete it... it may be useful
material for you to read and help your programming! although very
advanced for a beginner, you might want to come back to it in a few
months.)

I suggest you read this for instructions on how to install Emacs for
Windows:
  http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
and this for how to install a very minimal version of GCC for Windows
  http://www.mingw.org/docs.shtml#installation

I'm sorry there is not a single, easy download for this (that I know
of), it would be really handy if someone made such a "beginning coder"
download of Emacs for Windows users, with nice defaults.

I'd suggest you try the Emacs tutorial out as soon as you install
Emacs, to get a feel for how it works.