Hello There,

I'm facing an issue today as we need to develop a graphical utility that will work under windows for our workshop.

So here are some of the requirement:
- It must have a graphical interface
- Run on Windows at least and some other eventually
- Must be able to communicate with an Oracle DB.
- Be fairly easy to learn and OOP as I don't want to spend 3years to develop this application.

I already know few languages such as bash, Perl and PHP/MySQL but so far I only develop under Linux and never under Windows.
And that's why I need your advice before to start in the wrong direction.


So which language would you choose from? C#, .NET, VB, C++, Java, etc...

Best regards,
Angel.

Is this Oracle DB online? In which case, have you considered creating a web interface for it? That would remove any portability issues, a graphical interface is easy to create and you already know PHP. Otherwise, Java is rather portable and is good for creating GUIs, as is Python. I would assume Perl is also capable of it, but have never used it to create one. If you can do it in Perl, I would suggest you do so - one less thing to learn.

VB is completely unportable, and is pretty crap except for creating macros. Same goes for .NET, it's windows-only. I would generally stay away from C/C++ if you're going for reasonably rapid development and aren't used to them already.

So... My advice would be to stick with what you know if possible, and if not go for Python/Java

.NET (which is not a language) is out unless you're confident about Mono's Oracle support.

The reasonable choices are Java and C++ (with Qt, which directly supports interoperating with Oracle databases).

The reasonable choice has been narrowed down to Java.

I would go with C++ (or Python) and Qt. Qt is cross-platform and apps written with it should compile for any supported OS, and it has built-in database support.

After checking on many forum I think C++ is fairly attractive...

I just have 2 last questions:
- Which language have the biggest community? C++ or Java
- Knowing none of these languages, which on will be the hardest to learn? (I already know Perl and I heard that there are some similarity with C++, Is that correct?)

Best regards,
Angel

Hi,

I'm not a programmer. Many years ago I learnd some c++ which seems to be not very difficult. The difficulty comes when you get deeper into the language.

With Java I only now that I'm not able to understand the code, so it seems difficult

With C# or C++ you'll have a language which is very well supported by Windows. With Javaprograms (my experience as a system administrator) we have several compatibility problems between the recent versions of the virtual machine and older programs.

Perl's syntax is similar to c++ in some cases, but Perl is a typical scripting-language (perhaps the most powerful) and one cannot compare any of the C/C++/Java languages with a scripting language.

Markus

C++

I've checked both languages and come to the conclusion that the simplest may not be the best.

Therefore I'll go for C++

Thanks for your advices,
Angel.

I suggest that you research your problem very carefully before you pursue any solution. In particular, consider carefully under what environments the program needs to run, and consider what existing software and/or software components might be available to simplify your solution.

These days, "applications" are usually stitched together ... using possibly several languages at one time, but above all, working to minimize the amount of new code that must be developed.

In other words, if you briefly ask, "what language should I use?" ... as you just did ... then count the votes and "dive right in" to building what you are certain must be the very first example of a program of its kind in the known universe ... then, well, you are going to spend a lot of time and effort, but you may well not wind up spending that time and effort as productively as you could have.