Question: I am just starting out learning to program C++. Visual Studio is nice but its so picky and its caused a lot of problems for me getting my code to compile. So I heard code blocks is a good one. Does anyone know of any others that are simple and hassle free? I tried to create a hello world program in VS 2010 with the instructions in my book and of course it went crazy and said you can't do this that and the other. =/

Answer: 
The syntax is language specific. There's no (good) programming language that allows you to type your code loosely.  

Nevertheless, take a look at [my answer on another question.](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8368649/how-to-get-started-learning-mingw-c/8368720#8368720)
If you are looking for lighter IDEs then you may take a look at [this](http://beans.seartipy.com/2006/12/31/six-popular-ides-for-developing-software-in-cc-on-windows-platform/).