Hello, I'm trying to learn C or C++. It would be my first language.

(Please refrain from telling me that it's too hard for a starting language ... I believe that whether something is easy or difficult is only a matter of perception. I hear that simpler languages teach bad habits. In addition, I strongly believe I am capable of grasping the concepts.)

Anyway, I'm trying to learn by tutorials. I'll probably get a book some time down the road. The tutorials compile fine... probably because they rarely do anything terribly demanding. Sometimes I've tried compiling open source code, to try and learn by example (Sourceforge comes in handy for things like that). However, almost nothing will compile. I frequently encounter innumerable errors and/or warnings. I believe that some of the problem is that I don't have some header files, but I also get errors when I know I have the required header files. Still, I'm extremely green in the field and I admit that at this point I don't really know what I'm doing, so I could be way off.

I am using the Dev-C++ 5 beta IDE. I can post examples of errors I get or post links to source that I'd like to try compiling.

Oh... 2 minor things. What exactly is a makefile? Also, in IDEs you can save "project" files. How important is it to use a "project" file? I would imagine it's possible to get by without them, but that the "projects" simplify things.