CompuServe Messages

Daniel, well, for starters you could do worse than the DICE package. GCC is really big and probably too difficult to set up and work with at your level (well, most levels, really…). I f you use DICE's installation routine you shouldn't encounter any problems setting up a working programming environment. One of the main rules for every serious program(mer) is: RTFM (i.e. "Read That F…er…antastic Manual!") which in this case (no written documentation) means you should locate something like a "readme.first" file and do so. Look for something like a "Docs" or "Documentation" drawer. READ THE DOCS! These should tell you how to work the thing. For your first encounter with the LANGUAGE itself you should go for some written material, i.e. a C tutorial (like "Applications programming in ANSI C" by Johnsonbaugh/Kalin, Macmillan Publishing Co., ISBN 0-02-361131-6, which is what I bought to get me started, and which I think is didactically well made, but there are of course a number of other good books out there). This will get you started on the language, but it will cover absolutely nothing specific to the Amiga. So, once you got the hang of the language and want to go into programming Intuition (the Amiga's Graphical User Interface) you will want to invest into the "Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manuals" (published by Addison-Wesley). There are several of them, covering "Hardware", "Devices", "Libraries", "Includes & Autodocs", and there's a "User Interface Style Guide" (that's the one constantly referred to if you see the expression "style guide compliant"). Better still, find out the location of your nearest Amiga User Group. They are bound to have some members who know how to program the machine and will probably be willing to "kickstart" you into doing likewise… Have FUN & good luck, // Christian "ELP" Busse \X/ near Frankfurt, Germany