[sub] [Sussex] SQL Server

[Steve Dobson]

Hi Geoff

On 16 April 2003 at 11:32 Geoff Teale wrote:
> IN terms of converting a C++ developer.  Well, the big thing 
> is to get him to try programming in a UNIX environment.  From
> a C point of view UNIX is way simpler than windows, froma  C++
> point of view you need to think about something like Qt3 to
> get a decent object layer on the OS - but, most of the time
> the C API's are still good enough to do the job.  Anyone 
> who's used MFC would find UNIX programming easy!  

Things are only easy if you understand them.  As you (thanks to
your VB expertises & Gentoo) under stand both Windows and
Unix way of working and are therefore in a position to say 
which is easier.  But think about the things that the pore 
Window's developer has to learn.  There is this whole new
strange think called a "command line prompt".  Where is the 
helpful little icon, menu button or wizard to do his work 
for him/her?  The first think I recon you need to teach a
windows developer is to take one hand off the mouse.  :-)

> There are bad points though, the main one being the lack of
> a decent IDE (Visual C++'s IDE is pretty damned good),
> KDevelop is half way there, Eclipse is kick arse-cool and
> is close to be a tool of choice for me these days (it's
> slowly creeping in where emacs used to rule in my life), but
> there isn't anything as tightly integrated as the VCC IDE ... 
> of course Kylix does C++ these days and has nice support
> for Apache, etc.. but that way lies expense.

All that is window dressing.  All one really needs is a
warm chair, a cold beer, make and vi!  Everything else is
a waste of money.

A few years back a went to Borland/Inprise's release of JBuilder
when it was released (in pure Java) for Solaris.  There quote
was "Most developers use vi or emacs and make.  We can do better
than that!"  No they couldn't.  Having played with their IDE for
three months I came to the conclusion that the lost of control
I suffered was not worth the few advantages their IDE offered.
Now I maybe old, and I maybe a control freak;  but I can drive
make into doing anything I want it to.

Steve

P.S. Ant is a good replacement for make in the Java world - but 
only because of the way you have to layout the files for compilation.