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Trash Talk - Language change called for

tcsoccerman - Thu Nov 29, 2007 9:55 pm
Post subject: Language change called for

I've recently been looking into learning a new language, although this decision seems to have lots of influences and would like your opinion.
As you likely know, i am working on a Hockey statistical program. In my new GUI, i use lots of animations and moving of controls during user-time. This adds the idea that..
*the language must be quick on amations, and moving of graphics.
Also related to the hockey program, is the idea that i want an .exe output. I want this because a.) it is alot more simple to use than, scripts(i believe) and .net framework sord of thing(c#, my current language). also you don't need a large knowledge of file types to use it. so, i'd like the language..
*to make .exe files.
Another factor in choosing the language is that i may be looking into a mac. Mac has a built in compiler using "objective-C" programming language which is evidently similiar to normal c. All this adds is a bonus for the "C" language.Another bonus to "C" is that i already know how the basic syntax is from coding asss. BUT the big ouch for "C" is that there isn't any good C visual debugger/compiler/editer. which comes to the next idea....
*the language should have a good compiler/editor/debugger that is visual (gui) meaning you can drag and drop items to make automatic generated _ *code. please also note that microsoft visual compilers tend to run slow on my pc(windows xp).
Hopefully someone has some knowledge of languages advantages/disadvantages. Thank you again ss community.

P.S. Learning new languages is of interest. Will certainly help my knowledge in the area.

Doc Flabby - Fri Nov 30, 2007 5:14 am
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Another language to consider is FreePascal, like C only easier

http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

Find a copy of VS6 and you have one of the best C Visual Enviroments.
BUT the big ouch for "C" is that there isn't any good C visual debugger/compiler/editer

Dr Brain - Fri Nov 30, 2007 8:14 am
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Java and Eclipse. Eclipse is probably the best IDE in the world.

Java doesn't compile to .exes, but my guess is that you'll be better off in the long run, especially if you're about to switch away from windows to a mac (which doesn't run exes)

Cyan~Fire - Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:04 pm
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C# is easier than Java, C, C++, or any of the other common general development languages. If you're trying to switch away from C# because it requires "too much knowledge", you're out of luck.

Smong - Fri Nov 30, 2007 6:57 pm
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I know you said you want an exe, fancy animations and drag/drop code generation (for controls I'm guessing), but what about php/mysql/javascript? If you don't already know it you could give it a try. Website making skills always come in handy.

There are several people in ss offering webspace so hosting won't be a problem. There are also javascript libraries for doing fancy animation. Finally if you make it as a website then a lot more people can use your app.

Bak - Fri Nov 30, 2007 9:11 pm
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Dr Brain wrote:

Eclipse is probably the best IDE in the world.

second.

CypherJF - Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:16 pm
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I think the eclipse developers have done a very nice job with the latest stable release that's been out for a while now.

I've also heard NetBeans is decent with it's profiling, etc. abilities.

Doc Flabby - Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:17 am
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once you've used eclipse, netbeans seems 2nd rate

tcsoccerman - Sun Dec 02, 2007 1:07 pm
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@doc : lazarus looks interesting and i'll probably be looking into it alot for a different project, but i've written/done too much on my current project in c# to switch

@ dr. brain : i'm going to look at eclipse and most likely use it, but like i said above i'm too far into the project to switch now.

@ cyan-fire : c# is certainly easy. i'm not looking for an easier language, but a more powerful language like c or c++.

@smong : i considered making it a website. it would add many features such as an area for players to im sorda, or staff meetings to discuss about the team, but i think that that would be more of a "learn how to make websites" project rather than a "make a statistics program" project.

@cypherjf : more of a reason to look at eclipse.

So after all this i decided to change my app gui to not include moving objects and stuff in order to keep the coding i've already created (about 20 files). ty anyway, for real, i'll definiately favorite this post.

Doc Flabby - Sun Dec 02, 2007 1:50 pm
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tcsoccerman wrote:

=
@ cyan-fire : c# is certainly easy. i'm not looking for an easier language, but a more powerful language like c or c++.

Theres very litte you can't do in c# than you can't do in c/c++. c# is more than capable of producing an animated statistics program.

c# is easy to start coding in, but i would argue it is not an "easy" language, its similar in complexity to java, and java was designed to replace c++. The idea of a language like c# or java is you get the power of C++ without the pain of having to do the memory management yourself (which you have to do in c)

The problem you most likely had is you were trying to do something in the "wrong" way, ie it works, but poorly. This isnt the fault of the langugue, its the way you've coded it. I would be interested to look at your animation code. If you simple attached the animation to a "button". ie the code runs when you click the butten, you will run into problems, the UI will become unresponsive as you have taken control away from it. You could then try running the animations in a different thread, however this is not permitted in windows, windows controls must all be run on the same thread, however if you were to look into the Background process Control or BeginInvoke, to run your animation asynchronously to the GUI it should be easy to animate multiple controls in c#.

Powerful apps can be created in c#
Subspace API

and distort wrote a chat client in c#
http://www.ssforum.net/index.php?showtopic=17841&pid=199036&st=0&#entry199036

Learning a language like C/C++ is worth doing, but don't make the mistake of thinking its substantially more powerful.

Cyan~Fire - Sun Dec 02, 2007 3:40 pm
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Doc Flabby wrote:

Theres very litte you can't do in c# than you can't do in c/c++. c# is more than capable of producing an animated statistics program.

Not really true. C# exchanges power for simplicity. You can't do quite as much in C# because you don't manage pointers yourself.

@tc: But Doc Flabby's right, for your uses C# or Java is probably fine. Java would, of course, be preferable since it's more portable, but making UIs is much harder. Out of all the common languages, making UIs is by far the easiest in C#.

k0zy - Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:48 pm
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Doc Flabby wrote:

Subspace API and distort wrote a chat client in c#

Code: Show/Hide

/// <summary>
/// Much thanks to Coconut Emulator and CatId without which this class would not be possible.
/// </summary>

You might want to replace "which" with "whom" or "them".

On the topic:
It's possible to wrap java classes in a jar, which can be embedded in an exe using
http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/
or
http://jsmooth.sourceforge.net/

So it's possible to create exe files with java.

I suggest C# though, because it's alot easier to create GUI apps with it.

Doc Flabby - Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:50 pm
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Cyan~Fire wrote:

[..]
Not really true. C# exchanges power for simplicity. You can't do quite as much in C# because you don't manage pointers yourself.

Actually thats not a good arguement. In c# you can choose to use "unsafe" code and choose to manage pointers yourself, and then theres all sorts of fun you can get up to, but if you were going to do any of those things I think you be better just using c. It defeats the whole point of using a managed language

Animate Dreams - Sun Dec 02, 2007 5:41 pm
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Cyan~Fire wrote:

Java would, of course, be preferable since it's more portable, but making UIs is much harder. Out of all the common languages, making UIs is by far the easiest in C#.

I've heard that C# is almost as completely cross-platform as Java is, now.

tcsoccerman - Sun Dec 02, 2007 6:38 pm
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i don't think so animate, it requires the .net framework and lots of people i've had test my program can't because they don't have .net. although that is changing because most computers come with .net now (at least i know windows does).

CypherJF - Sun Dec 02, 2007 7:41 pm
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I don't believe the .NET framework has been ported to all the other OS' that the JRE can run on.

Animate Dreams - Sun Dec 02, 2007 8:33 pm
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CypherJF wrote:

I don't believe the .NET framework has been ported to all the other OS' that the JRE can run on.

Obviously not all, that's why I said "almost". As long as it runs on the major OSes, especially if it's a client program, that's all you need. Not many people run Solaris 5 as a desktop computer, for example.

CypherJF - Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:16 pm
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Cell phones, too?

Cyan~Fire - Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:42 am
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Doc Flabby wrote:

Believe me, I've messed with it too. (Had to do some calls to the Win32 API from C#.) It's a big pain, very ugly, and still not as powerful as C/C++.

Dr Brain - Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:23 am
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Animate Dreams wrote:

[..]

Obviously not all, that's why I said "almost". As long as it runs on the major OSes, especially if it's a client program, that's all you need. Not many people run Solaris 5 as a desktop computer, for example.

It seems like Java has been moving more and more toward the server end of the spectrum, actually. Some of the new developments in the Java GC are quite interesting. Same for distributed VMs.

Bak - Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:31 pm
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guis in java are not hard. Think about the most intuative way one would design a gui system and you have java's system. Of course some of you might like a visual editor and all that, but I think netbeans has one of those. Anyways those suck just use text-based gui editing.

tcsoccerman - Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:41 pm
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i really like the visual part actually, as long as it's a good one. I know in sharpdevelop, you can change the name of a control and the editor changes all the references of that control to use the new name. you can edit the properties of the controls easily as well. It also lets you play around with your program's gui and see what you like/don't without going through any coding.

Animate Dreams - Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:12 pm
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Cyan~Fire wrote:

the Win32 API from C#.) It's a big pain, very ugly,

If I had to guess, that's probably not a property of C#....

Cyan~Fire - Mon Dec 03, 2007 6:53 pm
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Funny.