I'm going to school to be a mechanical engineer, and part of the requirements is to take a series of classes working with matlab. Just wondering if anyone has significant experience that I can go to for help when I need it (my teacher is one of those that just answers questions with another question).
Also, is there any good free software out that for writing/testing matlab code? I have notepad ++ and it has the matlab plugin, but something with like an interactive window so I can see if a script actually runs?

Regards,
-Zell1luk

matlab should already have an IDE. and talk to your TAs.

There's a lot of documentation online, just do your research there instead of asking your teacher, or simply ask your specific questions here.
Octave is pretty good and it's free if you use linux and it has an interface.