C programming

[treacherousumbrella]

Anyone have much experience with C/C++ ? Finding myself almost exclusively working with code in SM so I'm considering biting the bullet and learning C++ now I have some spare time. Will be working my way through this book: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/de ... &tid=12283, which is farily comprehensive on the audio side of things. Any advice on choosing a compiler? The book also doesn't cover GUI building so if anyone knows of any books or websites that give an introduction to that then that would also be helpful.

[MichaelBenjamin]

the book also mentions csound for a good part, which is pretty useless to learn general audio programming since it uses its own syntax. audio programming is all about filling 1d arrays with numbers and playing them back at audiorate, i guess you learned these basics already with sm, so the same things in c might not be much of a difference.
audio cookbook examples are easily found on the web and also quite easy to translate - it doesnt make much difference for example if a filter code is written in ~readable c and you can translate it to sm simple-c, then you can aswell translate it to python or java, there is not much difference.
maybe a more general beginners c book that explains the structure of the language with a broader range of examples and less specific librarys might be more helpful.
the learning curve might be steepest where sm makes it the easiest - instant testing gratification, live debugging and simple drag drop gui building and one click export to vst dll.
so the topics of special interest might be:
how to connect "stuff" ie libraries classes, functions, methods, data types and all that/ the equivalent of sm modules, primitives code boxes and cables
how to build a gui ontop
how to run/compile
how to debug
vst-sdk?

[rl]

... Any advice on choosing a compiler?

depending on your development plattform: on Linux gcc , on Windows gcc/mingw or the MS compiler (you can use the free Visual Studio express edition together with the Win7 SDK)

The book also doesn't cover GUI building so if anyone knows of any books or websites that give an introduction to that then that would also be helpful.

The VSD SDK has limited (but working) GUI support. You will need the VST SDK in any case, since it's much simpler to write a plugin than a full working audio program. I've heard VST plugin GUIs successfully implemented using FLTK, and there is JUCE (comprehensive library but I never used it). Documentaion and tutorials mostly found in the GUI toolkit.