Install QtCreator to complete the first program in C++

To achieve great things, a worker must first sharpen his tools. When it comes to programming, selecting a powerful and widely-used development tool is essential. These tools are now commonly known as IDEs—Integrated Development Environments—that provide a lot of support for developers. While some programmers prefer manually writing makefiles to manage their source code, this approach can be quite challenging for beginners. Makefiles may seem complicated, like ancient scripts, and it's easy to get discouraged. However, learning makefiles is still important, but it's better to do so after gaining some experience with more complex projects. Once you understand project structure, source management, and dependencies, learning makefiles becomes much easier. For now, using an IDE is the most practical choice. Popular cross-platform IDEs include Qt Creator, Code::Blocks, Dev-C++, Eclipse CDT, and NetBeans. Based on years of experience, I strongly recommend Qt Creator—it’s user-friendly, free, and highly efficient.

Installing Qt Creator

Qt Creator has a consistent interface across all major platforms. However, there is one known issue when using it on Chinese Windows systems—the console output may display garbled characters when printing Chinese text. This happens because Qt Creator uses UTF-8 encoding by default for source files, while the console interprets input using GB2312. To fix this, you can either change your source file encoding to GB2312 or avoid printing Chinese characters in the console. The following images show the installation process and the first program in C++:

Writing Your First Program

As the saying goes, "A tall building starts from the ground." To become a C++ master, you must start with the basics of C. Creating a simple C project in Qt Creator is the first step. The image below shows a basic Qt Creator project setup:

You’ll notice several files in the project. The .pro file is the project configuration file and should not be moved. The Sources folder is just a grouping, not a real directory. The main.c file contains a simple "Hello World" program that the IDE automatically generates. You can delete and recreate it if needed, and the result will be the same. This program outputs a single line of text: "Hello World." From this simple example, you can see the core elements of a C program:

At least one C file is required.

A C file must have at least one main function.

The content inside main.c includes:

// Include this header file to use the printf function, otherwise it’s unnecessary #include /* The entry function int is the return type, void means no parameters, and it can be omitted */ int main(void) { // Output a text to the console printf("Hello World!"); // Return 0 indicates successful execution return 0; }

Core Concepts

Comments are for human readers only and are ignored by the compiler. Single-line comments start with //, while multi-line comments are enclosed in /* ... */.

Each statement ends with a semicolon.

The #include directive is used to include a header file, which allows access to functions or variables declared in that file.

The main function is the starting point of the program, and its code is enclosed in braces.

The printf function is used to output text to the console, and it must be included from stdio.h before it can be used.

Functions are called by their name followed by parentheses. Parameters inside the parentheses determine what the function will do. For example, in the case of printf, the string passed in is what gets printed.

You can call a function multiple times, such as calling printf ten times. The syntax is straightforward: write the function name, then the parentheses, and pass the necessary arguments.

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