Text editor for teaching a novice?

[Cicero480]

What is a good text editor for teaching a beginning programmer?

I am a C++ and Lisp programmer (about 2 years of experience total) and I'm going to teach my girlfriend some of the basics of C++ (she has a bachelor's in mathematics and some light programming experience with MATLAB). Can anyone recommend a good text editor for her to learn on? My experience is mostly with GNU Emacs and jEdit.

I'm looking for something with some of the basic features to help with coding, such as syntax highlighting and automatic indenting, but with a fairly simple interface that won't trip up a novice. In addition, I need it to run on Windows and be available to download for free (and preferably open-source).

Thanks a lot!

[WingedPanther]

DEV-C++ or wxDev-C++ are both nice C++ editors (one adds wxWidgets to the default libraries). I'm seriously addicted to jEdit myself for a wide variety of coding, however.

Crimson/Emerald editor is another editor that has support for launching the compiler and is pretty nice as well.

[John]

I like Eclipse for Java and C++ development.

[v0id]

I really like Vim. If you don't like the console-mode, you can choose to use the GUI.

[Cicero480]

Thanks for your replies. I think I'm going to go with Crimson Editor -- the interface is clean and the code indenting is pretty intuitive. I like jEdit a lot and it offers an excellent mix of power and usability, but I think Crimson Editor may be the best choice for minimizing the barriers to entry for a non-programmer.

Along those lines, I know Vim is powerful but if I'm not mistaken, it (like my own favorite, Emacs) isn't the easiest thing to pick up and use right away. (Of course, that's a ridiculous understatement for Emacs, ha ha.) I also thought about Notepad++ just because of how popular it seems to be, but its menus are a little bewildering and if it has an automatic indenting feature, I couldn't find how to turn it on.

As for Eclipse and Dev-C++, I've heard good things about both of them but I don't use IDEs that much.

Anyway, thanks again for all your input. Any more would be quite welcome.

[WingedPanther]

Crimson Editor has served me well. It wasn't until I started doing more regular expressions that it failed me (no support for \n, etc).

[v0id]

Originally Posted by Cicero480

[...] I know Vim is powerful but if I'm not mistaken, it (like my own favorite, Emacs) isn't the easiest thing to pick up and use right away.

Yes, you're right. It takes sometime before you're really comfortable with it. Personally, I've used it for about two months, and I've still problems with it in some areas. But fortunately, it has a big user-database, so it isn't hard to find information.