New development, unsure which language/framework to use

thx for the reply.

My app will be windows-only .. hence not a web-app.

I'm not sure which database we'll end up using, but for development I'll probably use MS Access.

I'm not sure if I should use NET or not.  If I go with D2006, NET is out of the question so the app will be Win32 only.

Basically, my question is: should I use D2006 (not NET), or VS2005(w/NET) ?

The only reason why I'm considering NET is because it will probably play a major role in the future, but in reality, the project itself can be written using MFC, Qt, GTK or any other framework available.  As for D2006 being the chosen language if I don't use NET, the reason behind it is because I'm already knowledgeable in Delphi, and handling datasets and databases in VS2005 doesn't seem as intuitive and straight-forward as it is with delphi.

What do you suggest ?

I am a .Net fan and I think Delphi is "icky" (a technical term, to be sure).

That being said, one-off applications like the one you are describing should be done quick and dirty in a language that requires the least amount of effort and thought.



When it comes to programming languages, every language has its strengths (if they didn't, they would die out within the first year or two).


If you were going to build an enterprise application with lots of hooks into microsoft products and were going to do some true software architecture, then I would tell you go with .net.

On the other hand, if you are going to build something with a dozen forms and a few thousand lines of code that is only going to be used by a handful of people (a few dozen), then by all means go with whatever is easiest.  Get the project done so you can move on to more important things that can move the business forward.

I am a .Net fan and I think Delphi is "icky" (a technical term, to be sure).

That being said, one-off applications like the one you are describing should be done quick and dirty in a language that requires the least amount of effort and thought.



When it comes to programming languages, every language has its strengths (if they didn't, they would die out within the first year or two).


If you were going to build an enterprise application with lots of hooks into microsoft products and were going to do some true software architecture, then I would tell you go with .net.

On the other hand, if you are going to build something with a dozen forms and a few thousand lines of code that is only going to be used by a handful of people (a few dozen), then by all means go with whatever is easiest.  Get the project done so you can move on to more important things that can move the business forward.

Actually MS has already released .Net 3.0 (at least something that they are calling .Net 3.0 anyway).

Sometime after .Net 2.0 was released, MS released additional .net classes for XML (XML extensions (3.0?))

at any rate, shortly after MS released the extensions they included them into the .Net Framework and called it Net 3.0.  

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a *new* framework release, but the next version of .Net to be released will not be 3.0 (because it already exists).

>>TAD, are we repeating our posts? :-)


Either I'm very passionate abou tmy responses, or my browser/proxy has been going bonkers and been triple posting many of my entries.

:-P

Yeah, I know. I believe .NET 3.0 is in a beta-phase or whatever. They're already working on .NET 4.0 as we speak. Which basically means (in my opinion) that soon the DLL Hell will have evolved into the .NET Hell. With one minor difference: the garbage in the .NET Hell is a lot bigger... By the time everyone starts nagging about the .NET Hell, Microsoft will probably come up with something else to "fix it" again...

I have Delphi 2006 but so far avoided writing VCL.NET applications in it, because Ewww... The VCL.NET is mainly there for backwards compatibility anyways so you should avoid it, if possible.

Using D2006 with WinForms isn't much different from using VS2005 with WinForms. But with Visual Studio you would be writing for .NET 2.0 while Delphi is limited to version 1.1 and thus out-of-date. Still, if you want to use D2006, use C#Builder instead of Delphi. Simply because C# is becoming THE language for .NET development.

.NET 3.0 is part of Visual Studio 2007 and 4.0 is in it's final stage of development. They are already designing 5.0 right  now.

So that leaves one option if you want to use Delphi: stick to the WIN32 environment. And perhaps Codegear (formerly Borland) will create a 64-bits compiler version which doesn't need .NET to run. Thing is, people think .NET will be the platform for the near future but so far there aren't many Microsoft products that have been written completely in .NET. Even Microsoft is still doing things the "oldfashioned" way. Will this change? Maybe for the more generic applications but there will always be some performance-critical tasks for which the .NET environment would be too limited. Think about database and device drivers. Or many of the build-in Windows applications. Even large games will perform better outside the .NET environment. So while .NET will be here to stay forever, the WIN32 platform is still very alive. (Maybe replaced by the WIN64 platform in the near future.)

Same argument about DOS applications, btw. While you can claim that DOS is dead, there are still quite a few console applications available, mostly for simpler tasks. And there's no chance that the console will ever disappear completely. Same with writing code for a native compiler instead of for a .NET compiler. The native compiler might be generating WIN64 applications in the future, but it will still generate native binaries that work independantly from .NET.

Besides, while .NET ended the socalled DLL Hell, I have already noticed the rise of the .NET Hell, where applications for different .NET versions will conflict with each other. Real nasty, considering we're only at version 2 now. With native code, the risks for entering this Hell are slimmer.