[Gllug] OT(ish): Advice

[Sudhir Anand]

I am an accountant and computers are my hobby.  I have been learning Kylix
OE (the free version with a lot of limitations) which is a RAD tool for
Linux.  However, I have two reservations.  I imagine that .NET is similar to
Kylix's drag and drop component based enviroment.

1) Kylix's environment, or .NET's for that matter,  actually hinders a
programmer from becoming familiar with program execution.  The framework
hides the implementation of low-level windows creation and program
execution.  The concept of dropping components and writing minimal code is
not conducive to understanding programming.

2) There are the cost implications.  Being an individual, I cannot afford
large outlays on any software.  Kylix Professional costs ?200.  Worse
though, a C# book packaged with Standard C# retails for ?90.  I envisage
that within a short period of time its limitations will come to the fore.
But upgrading to the full version is extremely prohibitive, costing ?700,
which I definitely cannot afford.

My Interest is in database access.  dbExpress, ADO.NET, ODBC & OleDB and
related data access technologies breed dependence on companies like Borland
or MS which create the data access technology.  In addition, third party
companies also create these components for sale to programmers who cannot
write the components themselves.  I guess that to access the internet or for
that matter for any other type of programming, components have to be sourced
and manipulated.  On the WEB, I read that Kylix 2's dbExpress component only
supported a particular version of MySQL but not subsequent upgrades.  I
suppose a fix was released but programmers relying on this component would
be in a fix and out of pocket.  I tried using the free version of dbExpress
but with no success.

This is not programming at all BUT programmers can become skilled at
manipulating components written by others without understanding the basic
API calls.  Over time, a programmer would become ever more dependent on
somebody else writing system level components to use.  To my mind, this is
not the way to learn the software program development cycle.

I am now also learning C++ using Kdevelop.  The first program I wrote to
display a simple  "Hello" window was a nightmare.  After writing a small
program, a "makefile" had to be generated to compile, link and create the
program.  Unlike Kylix, what struck me though was I could see the main()
function and could follow the program execution from start to finish.  In
addition, the concept of [include] files and [library] files is now familiar
to me.  Using tools like Kdevelop on Linux has immensely improved my
understanding of the program development cycle.  The Kylix's, and I suppose
.Net's, excessive wrapping masks this whole process invisible.

I have written a simple program to connect to Myself using the standard
MySQL API (C based MySQL API) which is available for free as is Kdevelop,
MySQL and other tools.  I have a clear idea of how the connection to MySQL
is made and data retrieved.  I can also examine the header files provided
with MySQL to understand data access in detail with no wrapping.  This API
has been available for a long time over which the bugs have been sorted out.
Just two days ago, I used MySQL++ API (C++ based MySQL API) with Kdevelop to
write a simple console program.  This worked the first time I tired.

The most reliable way to connect to MySQL with Kylix is to use MySQL's C
based library which also worked the first time I tried.  To use the
dbExpress components in the professional version would cost ?200 and given
the problems with past editions, I would not be comfortable using them.

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