ole@edb.tih.no (Ole Nymoen) (06/22/91)
There has lately been a heated discussion pro and contra Basic in this conference. It all started (if I remember correctly) with a question about Visiual Basic, and if it was any good. I was at a presentation of Visual Basic (VB) some days ago, and I have worked with a product (Winix Toolkit (WTK), mail me if you want more info) very much like it for over a year. The main difference is that WTK uses a pascal like language and needs SDK. When discussing if a product is any good it is necessary to view it in the context of the problem that is to be solved. Both products simplifies the user interface part of Windows programming to a level of painting and writing some simple statements in Basic or Pascal. As a tool for handelig the user interface both VB and WTK performs quite good. You can quickly make a prototype and you can take most of the work with you to the final product. If you make a product that has much code that isn't user interface related, you can put this code in a DLL and have it called from VB or WTK. This works very vell and results in code that has a clearly seperated interface and engine. After the presentation of Visual Basic and with my experience with Winix Toolkit I don't belive that I would use either product to much besides handeling the user interface. There is however a lot of work spared with this use of VB and WTK. My conclusion is: Product like VB and WTK saves a lot of work in the user interface part of a Windows program, but is not for the complete implementation of programs with a lot of non interface code. For this use a DLL made from C(++) code. I hope this will turn the discussion back from a flame war between Basic ant the others, and to a more interesting discussion of what tools to use to simplify Windows development. Ole
dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch) (06/23/91)
In article <ffm8vtoplC@humpty.edb.tih.no> ole@edb.tih.no writes: >There has lately been a heated discussion pro and contra Basic in this >conference. It all started (if I remember correctly) with a question >about Visiual Basic, and if it was any good. I'm glad to see it back having something to do with Windows. For more about Visual Basic, you might want to check the July 91 issue of Computer Language Magazine. It has a very positive article about Visual BASIC. It sounds way too limited for exclusive use, but as a way to quickly write little utilities, it seems ideal. This is more or less the position GWBASIC held on the PC, before Turbo Pascal came along and showed that compiled languages needn't be horrible for small projects. I'll finish with a quote from the article. The editors at CLM had a lot of little utilities, not well written, not easy to use, but with no time to bother fixing them up, when a beta Visual Basic arrived. "Within a couple of weeks we had rewritten every last utility. The new versions are full-fledged Windows 3.0 applications with all the requisite buttons, menus, resizable windows, mouse support, and icons -- all without using the SDK. It was faster and easier to write the programs as WinApps than as DOS applications, and the resulting utilities lack the unfriendliness and bugs of the originals. ... It's the best way we know of to create applications for Windows." They go on to temper that last statement, but still a very positive pre-review. Duncan Murdoch dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu > >I was at a presentation of Visual Basic (VB) some days ago, and I have >worked with a product (Winix Toolkit (WTK), mail me if you want more info) >very much like it for over a year. The main difference is that WTK uses >a pascal like language and needs SDK. > >When discussing if a product is any good it is necessary to view it in >the context of the problem that is to be solved. Both products simplifies >the user interface part of Windows programming to a level of painting >and writing some simple statements in Basic or Pascal. > >As a tool for handelig the user interface both VB and WTK performs quite >good. You can quickly make a prototype and you can take most of the work >with you to the final product. > >If you make a product that has much code that isn't user interface related, >you can put this code in a DLL and have it called from VB or WTK. This >works very vell and results in code that has a clearly seperated interface >and engine. > >After the presentation of Visual Basic and with my experience with >Winix Toolkit I don't belive that I would use either product to much >besides handeling the user interface. There is however a lot of work >spared with this use of VB and WTK. > >My conclusion is: Product like VB and WTK saves a lot of work in the user >interface part of a Windows program, but is not for the complete >implementation of programs with a lot of non interface code. For this use >a DLL made from C(++) code. > >I hope this will turn the discussion back from a flame war between Basic >ant the others, and to a more interesting discussion of what tools to >use to simplify Windows development. > >Ole