Just enrolled in my first programming class.
just wondering what a good c compiler and editor is?
If you're willing to put up some effort to learn the command line, try GCC. It will be installed along with XCode if you follow the directions mentioned by one of the above posters. You can then use any text editor you'd like, my preference is TextWrangler. If you're going to follow up this class with more programming classes command line knowledge will give you an advantage.
If you don't want to program on command line then you probably want to use XCode, which is what most Mac developers choose. Another option is to use Eclipse, which is cross platform and widely used. It would probably be fine for your class, but serious Mac programmers would choose XCode.
have a download for jGRASP but dont really like it too much. any recommendations for FREE editors and compilers?
Yeah, I can't say why you would want to use jGrasp as a beginner. Sounds like your professor is trying to plug it