Todays challenge - learning C or C++ or something

Right well I know a bit about programming, with a history of Visual Basic, VBA, PERL, shell script, TCL and a few others but I don't know jack about C or C++ so I have decided to learn something about them.

First port of call from a google search was here: http://www.programmingtutorials.com/c.aspx, nice easy tutorials. Head for the C++ one first but that assumes some knowledge of C so redirect to the C tutorials.

Ahh just what I need. Now, first I know I need a compiler so I go to find a free one. Stumble across this useful post http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/altvcc.aspx

So I go to get GCC from here: http://gcc.gnu.org/ and end up here: http://www.mingw.org/. Right I now have a compiler installed.

Next stage, I reckon a GUI would be good, I'm assuming that it's a bit necessary for a good ol Windows app design. Everything points me to wxWidgets from here: http://www.wxwidgets.org/, then some things say install MSYS (no idea what that is) so I do that. Then I can download and install visualwx from here:http://visualwx.altervista.org/

Ok, all downloaded. Where to start?? Hmm. Fire up visualwx - crashes, can't find python25.dll. Ok, hmm, python. Right well find python for download, http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.0.1/.

Ok, so in the install I notice it also installs TCL hmm, so now I have C compilers, TCL and Python but still not started yet!

Right, back to python to get python 2.5. Can't find 2.5 but got a 2.5.4 - that must be close enough. And no, it still doesn't run, can't find python25.dll. Odd, I can, it's sitting in system32. Copy file to \windows and then the same folder as the .exe and no results, same error. Right, I quit on that one. Python uninstall and visualwx uninstall and back to google.

A bit of searching throws up something called QT - looks like it's worth a stab. Nice big download too.

Arrgh no idea where to start here, chucked in some basic C++ code and all of the build options are greyed out - no idea why and the help is about as useful as a wet fish.

Ok, now in my travels I did spot that there is Visual C available for free in an 'express' version. Now I am familiar with visual basic so maybe this is my way forwards.....