linux development - need some advice
 

hi,

i want a career in linux programming.

which language should i learn.

qt = good enough, but it cost a lot for commercial versions/non-gpl programs

i want to learn a totally free/gpl language.

i tried gtk+ but it is very hard to code and not newbie friendly (like VB)

any other RAD tool (Rapid Application Development) available in linux ?

i was thinking about java/mono but cant seem to decide. i hear a lot that java is very slow and mono has/may have legal problems in future

what other options i have that compares to vb ?

If you find anything that compares to Visual Basic can you please post it....

Then everyone knows what not to use.

vb was one of the best tools of its time for quickly developing applications on windows platform. whats wrong with that ?

the security holes galore? IE) Melissa, ILOVEYOU
those ring a bell? they were both *.vbs

Uglyugly, consider learning Tcl/Tk and/or Perl. Tk is a graphical toolkit that interface with a number of scripting languages including Perl and (especially) Tcl. It's useful for rapidly developing GUIs. BTW qt and gtk+ are toolkits, not languages. A number of different languages (C, C++., Python, etc.) have "hooks" allowing users of those languages to use those toolkits.

Also, if you want a career, as opposed to just a job, learn something about programming itself. Languages and toolkits come and go (most programmers know at least 4 or 5 languages, at minimum), but certain principles, algorithms, and ideas remain consistent. Focus on learning those. I've heard that The Practice of Programming by kernighan and Pike is well recommended for this, but sadly I've not had the time to read it myself.

There are many programmers that do not like BASIC or any of its derivatives. I won't go into the details of why that is, but a commonly repeated criticism is that BASIC does not encourage programming practices that are traditionally viewed as "good". That's all I'll say in an effort to avoid turning this thread into a holy war.

However, on Windows platforms, there are plenty of RAD development environments instead of VB. Borland/Inprise/Whatever has quite a strong line of products: Delphi, C++ Builder, and JBuilder. Microsoft has its Visual C++, and there are others I'm sure. Actually, Borland has introduced Kylix which is suppsoed to be a RAD environment that runs in Linux. I don't know what the underlying language is, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Anyway, if you're truly serious about trying to enter the world of professional programming, you will have to bite the bullet and learn the non-newbie-friendly languages. Programming is not limited to slick-looking GUIs for a desktop. More often than not, you would be working on the underlying functionality of the code, or writing a "quickie" console-based program.

That said, put your desires for GUI development on the back burner for a while. Learn scripting first (one or more of: Bash, Perl, Python). Then work your way into C, C++, or Java.

thanks !

>Actually, Borland has introduced Kylix which is suppsoed to be a RAD environment that runs in Linux. I don't know what the underlying language is, but it's interesting nonetheless.

i checked their website. Kylix is using qt toolkit and there has been no update from borland on kylix for a long time. the project is pretty much dead.

i know programming concepts looping, branching, structures, pointers and oops concept like inheritance, operator overloading, classes...i have done a bit of C & C++, BASIC, PASCAL...during college days. did a bit of java, oracle too.

>Uglyugly, consider learning Tcl/Tk and/or Perl.

How does it compare to Python/TK. which one is more used and better.

hi, i got a short tutorial on vb6 to tcl immegration:

http://yoyo911.spymac.net/books/VB6-to-Tcl.rar