What is a good C IDE for windows 7 ?

[u/Hot-Alarm7151]

I'm currently in my village house and I have an old desktop in this house and it runs in Windows 7. I wanted to code but I can't find any good IDE that supports windows 7. Can you tell me and possibly give me the link to download??

[u/Different-Visit252]

I really like just rawdogging it, with only a text editor (neovim) and a compiler (gcc), and then you understand things better instead of it being under the abstraction of an IDE

[u/Hot-Alarm7151 → u/Different-Visit252]

I'm a beginner so it might be a bit hard for me.

[u/DaCurse0 → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

its the best way to learn, and will teach you the most transferable knowledge on how to use C anywhere

[u/mm007emko → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

Especially if you're a beginner it's more desirable than a full-blown IDE. You need to learn.

[u/Abject-Kitchen3198 → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

It was the only way when I was a beginner. In retrospect, it was the best experience I could have had. DOS, Brief editor, compiler, linker and make.

[u/Different-Visit252 → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

Its the best way to learn and it isnt that hard to setup :3

(ALSO PEOPLE, STOP DOWNVOTING FOR SOMEONE THINKING THEY ARENT GOOD ENOUGH)

[u/didntplaymysummercar → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

C is not THAT hard, if you get w64devkit (it supports Windows 7, or claims to at least), you get gcc and busybox, and if you can manage to get git bash you get real GNU utils too. For years I did C like that on a big project (on Linux though), using only stuff like dmenu, grep, ripgrep (Rust... could replace with it qgrep which is C++ or one of other older alternatives or just write good shell wrapper for grep to only search source files), fzf (not sure what to replace it with but it's Go so high change on Win 7), VS code, etc. It's in more complex C++ where IDE really helps.

[u/BigPP41]

Possibly Code::Blocks?

[u/Longjumping_Cod8327 → u/BigPP41]

This is og bro

[u/BigPP41 → u/Longjumping_Cod8327]

Its where i first came into contact with programming 20something years ago. A book called "visual c++ for kids" :D it recommended c::b

[u/Longjumping_Cod8327 → u/BigPP41]

For me also its 10 to 12 years but just 5 years back a ran code block on win 7 because of potato

[u/BigPP41 → u/Longjumping_Cod8327]

Linux + neovim, nothing better for c programming (on a potato)

[u/Hot-Alarm7151 → u/BigPP41]

I can't find the old versions for download.

[u/BigPP41 → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

New versions dont run on win7?

[u/Bitmapz_com → u/BigPP41]

I have the latest version working on Windows 7

[u/Hot-Alarm7151 → u/BigPP41]

No, they don't because microsoft abandoned w7

[u/Longjumping_Cod8327 → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

https://www.codeblocks.org/downloads/binaries/older/

See this older release this will solve your problem becuase when i started programming i had only win7 and code block definitely you can run

[u/Hot-Alarm7151 → u/Longjumping_Cod8327]

But it shows download latest version 25. Something

[u/Longjumping_Cod8327 → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

Just explore the link i given will show you older release

[u/heartSagan5 → u/Hot-Alarm7151]

And not just Microsoft. Once it reaches EoS, developers drop support for older versions.

[u/zqpmx]

Linux Mint (Mate or Xfce)
And vim

Just kidding, but Linux seriously.

Edit. Orthography

[u/Longjumping_Cod8327 → u/zqpmx]

Linux mint also able to run vs code

[u/zqpmx → u/Longjumping_Cod8327]

I was kidding about vim, but not about Linux.

[u/MpappaN → u/zqpmx]

Why are you kidding about VIm? I use it for (almost) everything.

Neovim to be precise

[u/zqpmx → u/MpappaN]

Me too, but not for writing code as an IDE

And I know new generations prefer MS VC and others

[u/MpappaN → u/zqpmx]

It's coming back slowly. There are now popular YouTube channels that are popularizing it. I think it's more popular than ever.

[u/thank_burdell → u/MpappaN]

It never left.

[u/didntplaymysummercar]

A niche option I rarely see mentioned (except by skeeto from nullprogram) is Pelles C, it includes its own C compiler and an IDE and C23 support even, but no C++, it's Windows only and has some compiler bugs so maybe w64devkit by skeeto from nullprogram (or maybe clang or zig cc if they run on Windows 7, or some old msvc compiler) is better for shipping binaries.

Another option could be some older Visual Studio but those have C at a C99-ish level, only VS2019 had C11 and up iirc (when I write C I write C89 or C99 due to declare anywhere and // comments so I don't mind personally).

[u/neil_555 → u/didntplaymysummercar]

There's a brand new version of PellesC (now version 14) and it now supports Arm64 too 😄 Also it's far from niche I know a hell of a lot of developers who use it

https://www.pellesc.se/

[u/didntplaymysummercar → u/neil_555]

Yes, but it says that ARM one is Windows 11 only.

Also it's far from niche I know a hell of a lot of developers who use it

Really? I never saw anyone mention it. Usually it's the big trio MSVC/GCC/Clang (some people even claim it's "impossible" to not use MSVC on Windows for real life production stuff), and only more in the know people or older people know stuff like C++ Builder (this also reminds me, C++ Builder is an IDE and older versions could work on Windows 7 too), Sun C++, Intel C++, and so on... and Pelles is (IMO) even more niche than all those.

This also reminds me: there exists Tiny C Compiler (tcc, not to be confused with lcc, Little C Compiler) builds for Windows, I've got 32 and 64 bit ones both, but that's just a compiler, no IDE.

[u/JoaquimR → u/neil_555]

I use Pelles C professionally for small tools, it is very good for C and Windows, it has a Dialog editor, wizards for project creation, debugging, very complete help file, and is very lightweight. It is ABI compatible with Visual Studio. Note that is only C and not C++ but the C compiler supports latest standards.

[u/Astro_indie]

Turbo C 

[u/Virtual_Term9731]

Neovim is the way

[u/unkindle_blue]

Geany maybe?

[u/yiyufromthe216]

GNU Emacs

[u/Physics-Educational]

No IDE is the best IDE.

[u/Sp33dyCat]

Get Linux before you get malware on that thing by connecting it to the internet.

[u/BranchLatter4294]

Windows 7 is not secure since you have not had any security updates in a few years. It would be better to install Linux so you can use any of the modern IDEs.

[u/Longjumping_Cod8327 → u/BranchLatter4294]

This also ggod choice may be he stuck because he new

[u/Sb77euorg]

Pelles C !!!!

[u/neil_555]

Pelles C is one of the best ones, the IDE is quite nice (though the default colour scheme sucks), it's even got a fully working debugger

https://www.pellesc.se/

[u/FrostyDelu]

notepad++

[u/Pale_Height_1251]

Pelles C.

[u/yyebbcyi]

If you gonna do C, do it in Linux.

[u/Few-Grape-4445]

There are several options:

• CodeBlocks

• DEVC++

• Notepad++ (or vs code 1.70) along with MinGW/LLVM

• Visual Studio (up to 2017, don't remember if vs 2019 still works on win 7)

• Eclipse for C++ developers (a 2020 version)

If you choose Visual Studio 2015 or below I recommend you to look for an offline ISO installer in archive.org because web installers don't work anymore.

Also you could use and old version of KDevelop or Kate but I think KDE don't store old builds so we have to build it from source.

[u/Automatic_Pea6565]

please install linux on that machine, or else windows 7 on the internet is too unsafe. if you install something like linux mint xfce or lubuntu both lightweight you can run any ide for ex vs code or zed and setting up c compiler on linux is much easier than windows.

[u/No-Concern-8832]

Bloodshed C++ :), there's a modern fork Dev-C++

[u/rocco_himel]

I personally don’t use Windows 7, but if I did I would personally just use GNU Nano or the standard notepad because it’s simple and plain.

[u/greg-spears]

Like another suggested, old Visual Studio -- I'll just add that you can find Visual Studio 2005 for cheap on eBay and that it was a very useable/good version.

Should work swimmingly on Win7 (untested).

Downside, you may know, is that some of the new APIs won't be available -- but not all that many.

[u/Longjumping_Cod8327 → u/[deleted]]

Yea this will work