XCode vs. Visual Studios?

I am a windows user, and I am trying to figure out as much about the mac as possible because I am going to swich soon. Then I thought I will still have to use windows because I am in highschool programming in C++, and there is no alternative for the mac.


But I was wrong, i found xCode while searching on the internet, i have tried searching on the internet about it and it seems to be extremely confusing, now, I program in Visual Studios C++ Express Edition, and looking to tranact to the mac, but I can't seem to find any c++ programs people have made,





Now my question is what does it look like on the mac when you program in c++ and the command prompt?Is there a command prompt?Can you prompt a user to enter something form a console?


for those who have used both, what is your stand on xcode vs visual studios?


My teacher kinda talked about SDK's and i aint familiar with it but i want to know if you can use microft sdk's on the mac?


maybe this is cause i'm new to programin.


thanks anyways.

XCode vs. Visual Studios?
There is a command prompt but it's different. It's a UNIX terminal/shell. You can definitely prompt a user to enter something at the console. There are many ways to program in Mac OS X. The Xcode program is free from Apple and is pretty good. There is also Eclipse which works on both Windows and OS X. You would need to get the C/C++ plugin with it. There are also the standard UNIX text editors such as emacs and vi. To be honest, if you're just starting and you want to have an easy transition, I would suggest that you start using Eclipse now on your Windows machine. Then, when it comes time to switch to your Mac, you won't have as much of a learning curve (i.e. you'll just use Eclipse there, too). You can get Eclipse at:


http://www.eclipse.org


On this page, there should be a "Download Eclipse" button or something along those lines. Then there should be an Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers link.


SDK means Software Development Kit. This is basically a set of libraries/headers for use in your programs. As far as using Microsoft SDKs on a Mac goes...well, I guess it depends on what you want to do. There is mono for the Mac:


http://www.mono-project.com


but I've never actually used it so I don't have an opinion on this one. Is your teacher having you do Windows-specific code? If not, as long as you stick with standard libraries, you should be fine. You won't be able to compile a C++ program on your Mac and give it to him to run on Windows however. You'll need to compile it on a Windows machine.