When I was about to start learning C programming back in college many years ago, I took a peek at what was about to come my way. I had some issues understanding the ‘cryptic’ syntax. I was familiar with Turbo BASIC from Borland Corp and could program quite well in it. I started looking around for some good book to learn C. I found a very nice book named ‘Al Stevens Teaches C’, it was an interactive tutorial that accompanied a C interpreter with it. This is the same Al Stevens who used to write great articles in Dr. Dobb’s journal. I enjoyed the way he took me through the core concepts and simplified approach to C syntax. The interpreter allowed very quick testing of the code I produced and it was pure fun.
You might be thinking why a post on such an old thing, well the interpreter created by Al was special, I loved it and I have recently been looking for it. I didn’t find the original text based version, but I was able to locate a newer GUI version that runs on windows or WINE on top of Linux. This specific version was produced in 2005 and works like a breeze. Its not an interpreter anymore. It is now more of an IDE built around the GNU C compiler. Its something nice for those who wish to No need for those bulky commercial compilers for newbies anymore, just get your hands on Quincy and get on with your learning with the power of open source.
By the way, I must mention that Quincy was named after the adorable cat of the author of the book, I wonder if the cat still lives? You’ll find a photo of her in the program logo.
You can download Quincy from this link.
http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1255959978
More information can be found at http://quincy.codecutter.org
