Getting Back to C++

[nairsunils]

I used to do some C++ programming in school and wanted to get back to programming as a hobby. In school we wrote programs to solve partial differential equations (chemical engineering). I was fairly new to OOP back then and was struggling to understand the newer standards. I was using Borland C++ 6 back then. By the end of the project I would rate my skills as a newbie in OOP.

Now I wanted to get back into OOP and do some programming to strengthen my OOP skills and also learn how to generate GUI and other stuff. I was wondering if Borland C++ 6 is still good or Visual Studio would be better for this.

I would also appreciate if someone can provide with some hardware system requirements. Would a netbook with 1.6 Ghz Atom processor, windows xp and 2 gig of ram be enough? (thinking Lenovo S10) Or would a dual core processor with 4 gig ram, a lite graphics card and windows7 be good? (Acer Ferrari One?)

Thanks for your time!

[S_M_A]

Borland 6 is really old so I wouldn't use it if I were you. If you want to easily make GUI's as well as playing around with objects go for MS C# express version. It's not C++ but maybe that's not the important thing?

If C++ is important there is a C++ express version as well but making a fancy GUI using it is less than easy to be mild.

Of course there's also all the open source options like for instance Eclipse, Code::Blocks and their preferred GUI frameworks. I have never used any so I have no clue regarding the "easy or not rating".

[Skizmo]

Maybe QT (http://qt.nokia.com/) is something for you. I switched from MFC to QT and never going back :)

Would a netbook with
Netbooks are powerful enough for compiling etc.. but the screen resolution is usually not really doable for a code environment. Code editors have a lot of windows and sub-windows and your screen will be too full very quickly.