5 replies to this topic

[knite]

im learning C++ and it seems like for windows programming theres a trillion variants that i have no idea about, like MFC, API, C#...wth does all that mean? whats used most commonly today for windows programming, like applications and stuff.

[emerson]

My usual focus is on Linux and OSX, but I'll give this a shot.

Most commonly used for windows... For shrinkwrapped programs I'd say C++ with MFC, done in Visual Studio. I haven't touched it in years, but I remember hating MFC. For anything but cpu intensive coding, my recomendation would be c#. Microsoft's put a fairly heavy push into urging developers to use it. And, I have to say, what I've seen of it does seem pretty nice.

If you don't mind being forced to keep your program open source, or paying a $2000 licencing fee if you do want it closed, my recomendation for C++ is using trolltech's QT. It's a widget set, along with a lot of network and other functions, that offer amazing crossplatform performance. It's the only way I've ever really found myself enjoying using C++. The form designer is pretty nice as well. WxWidgets is somewhat similar, but free. Sadly though, it's also a lot more annoying to use and doesn't 'quite' look perfectly native on all platforms.

[jaydfox]

Well, I mostly do Windows programming, unless it's small apps or tools, in which case I use mingw32 or djgpp from a DOS prompt (especially if I want it portable to other OS's).

As for C#.NET, or probably just about anything .NET, the language almost isn't important. At work, we're converting from C++ to VB.NET, which is a pain. But we also had a few programs that were in C#.NET, and converting them to VB.NET was a completely mindless task: you can literally change line-for-line at a rate of about 20-60 lines per minutes. In fact, there are tools on the internet to do the conversion automatically, though I don't trust them 100%.

The point is, once it's in a .NET language, it can be converted to one of the others in no time. I think there are only a few things you can do in C# that you can't do in VB, and they're complex shortcuts that aren't for the faint of heart: if you know how to use them, you're probably not a VB programmer anyway.

So if you like C++, then go with C#.NET. If you like VB6, then go with VB.NET (it's a lot to relearn, as you might imagine, since they've effectively made C++ 6 and VB6 into a single language with two flavors, C#.NET and VB.NET respectively).

But like emerson said, this would only be for non-CPU intensive work. For CPU intensive, C or C++ with MFC are still your best bet, if you have the patience to write 5-10 times the code to get the same work done. Also, you can link Intel's compiler into Visual Studio, buying you an extra few percent performance for CPU intensive stuff.

[maestro949]

I run a java / jsp dev team and we needed to build a fairly feature rich fat client that hooked up to our middle-tier java components via SOAP. We looked at AJAX, Java Swing, Flash and Microsoft Visual C#. While we probably could have accomplished the GUI in any one of them
we ended up going with Visual C# 2005 and overall the project has gone very well. Microsoft has invested a lot in C# and it shows.

[schwarzwald]

avoid MFC.

C# in .NET is probably a lot better than C/C++.

if you don't know what an API is, you have a long way to go. good luck.

[rahein]

There is not defacto standard programming language for any platform.

I personally think Delphi is the best language around. It does not have the market share that c# or VB have, but is very full featured, easy to learn, powerful, and fast to build apps. Let me know if you want more info about it. www.borland.com