A long time ago, I did a Computer Science degree. C (couldn't understand it), Modula2 (could understand it).

I now need to write a few small utilities, mainly file manipulation, ODBC queries, etc.

What development tools should I be looking at? Apps will run under XP.

Cheers

Lee.

Depends on speed etc.

If you want free, cross platform type stuff, then Java would be a good bet. You can download the jdk for free, and if you want a ready good open source ide then Eclipse comes recommended. It's a lot easier to get into than C/C++, and you jave access to jdbc drivers etc for sql support as well...

Otherwise I guess you'd have to go either the Borland route (something like Delphi) or Microsft with Visual C. These will probably run quicker than Java, but they're not as nice if you're just getting started....

Hello

I would also recommend the Java route. Eclipse is pretty good, as is Borland's JBuilder.

Steve.

Don't forget Perl for cross-platform development. It's ideal for what you want and you can get Activestate Perl for nothing.

Steve.

Depends on what you want to use it for really. If you are creating programs to run from a webserver, then perl may be a better route to go as it ties in nicely the web server. On the other hand, it's not as powerful / feature rich as Java out of the box, and not quite as "friendly" to program in, but it may well do everything that you want it to....

Perl does not "tie in" with a webserver any more or less nicely than any other language that supports STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR. Are you confusing Perl with mod_perl? Please don't mix the vegetables :)

It's not a particularly friendly language because you have so many ways of doing the same thing, but to call it "not as powerful/feature rich" makes me wonder if you know what you're talking about :)

Steve.

Disagree, as a delphi head thru and thru its great for getting started, lots of data-aware controls and drivers to get going with, you could easily write a simple DB app without writing a single line of code! java IDEs are getting there but still lack maturity and speed (I keep hoping they will improve but they dont!).

M$ tools offer a similar 'visual' design environment for quickly producing stuff.

Steve,

I was actually thinking of the ActivePerl distribution which includes mod_perl as well as the isapi version (or at least it did when I last looked). This version does tie in with a webserver much more nicely than using a Java program. With the isapi dll for example, the interpreter is running all the time, and so the startup / shutdown of a script (running in cgi-bin for example) is fairly quick. If you wanted to execute a java program as a cgi program, you'd have to fire up the jvm, load the program, do the garbage collection, and shut down again. This takes significantly longer than the perl route.

Hmm, that's a bit insulting :(. I've got over 10 years experience writing in C, C++, VB, Java, Perl, COBOL, Shellscript, Assembler, JCL etc. so I do know a little bit about this stuff. If you read the post, I actually said as feature rich "out of the box". Perl is indeed powerful, but you need to know how to get at it, and it is not very user friendly. For the casual / novice programmer, Java is much easier to get into, you get a lot more stuff for free without having to write your own code, and it's a lot easier to debug. It just depends on the application you are using it for and how willing you are to get your hands dirty that will dictate whether which is the most suitable.

Gary, I've not used Delphi (I always code everything myself as wizards never seem to do what I need ;)) I've have heard that you can knock up a basic app pretty quickly in it though. It's not as cheap a a free / open source jdk and ide though...

Iain

Sorry Iain my apologies, I didn't mean to insult you at all, I know you are a pro.

Unfortunately CPAN can't be bundled "in the box" or it'd be out of date the day after ;)

I think a lot of people confuse "difficult" with "lack of (decent) IDE", but one Perl saying, "TMTOWTDI", doesn't help either :)

Steve.

URL edit.

[Edited by stevencotton - 12/8/2003 8:01:44 PM]

Oooh, language wars :D - not had one of these in a while ;)

Perl is a functionally complete language, as is any decent language. It will do what you want, and there is more than one way of doing things, which is both a blessing and a curse.

If you want to hack something together that'll work, I'd use PERL or Visual Basic every day of the week.

If you want to do it properly, a pure object-oriented language such as Java will force you to do it properly with respect to the language: you can still make a mess.

Given that you know C of a fashion, try PERL. If you don't like that, try VB.

Java is great, and if you have the inclination then use it: I just think for glue to stick things together then PERL is king.

People are quite at liberty to disagree here :D
Cheers,
Nick.

No offence taken Steve. Not had a good language war for ages :D:D

Oh I'm not even having one, I haven't said a bad thing about any language :) Right tool for the right job rules, blind advocacy is annoying.

If you are looking to run apps on XP only you can't go wrong with Delphi. The language is fairly easy to learn, it compiles and builds fast and you end up with a single EXE and no messing about with runtime libraries.

It comes with built in tools for DB access and you can actually see results from a database with very little coding.

Even if you decide to go cross platform, Kylix is the Delphi for Linux that is bundled in with Delphi (can't remember which level) and it works very well.

There really isn't anything on the Windows platform you can't do with Delphi. I write Windows Services, Web Server applications, Web Services, normal applications etc. all with Delphi. OK, you might not want to write a device driver with Delphi, but there again you probably wouldn't want to write a device driver full stop. :)

Plenty of online resources if you get stuck and Gary is always about ;)

Java is a good language to learn but my god it is still slow. Oh and you need to faff about with runtimes again etc.

Cheers

Ian

[Edited by IWatkins - 12/8/2003 10:25:53 PM]

Bah ! Top Posters [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

[Edited by dsmith - 12/8/2003 10:48:37 PM]