The Power of Multi-Language Applications

wbav queries: "I've been programming for a number of years, and someone always asks, 'What language do you use, Java or C++?'. Now personally, I find that question a little biased, mainly because, of how I program. Rather than making one massive program, adding in all the support I need to make up for weaknesses in languages, I prefer to make several different apps that call each other, each using the strengths of that particular language. I tend to use C++ as my controlling program, and then execute Perl, PHP, or Java depending on what will give me the best performance for and cause me the least amount of pain to accomplish the task at hand. Do you guys use this kind of method, or do you try to do everything in one program? What advantages or disadvantages do you see in creating one program compared to many programs?"

Comments

VB Developer and Proud

[WndrBr3d]

Being a Visual Basic developer, I feel who better to know its short comings as a language. For the last few months, I've been doing cross language applications for windows.

Basically, I develop the Application Interface and Simple Functions using Visual Basic Modles and ActiveX Classes.

-but- For Intense Number Crunching, I weave Visual C++ DLL's that have all the function calls that would normally chew and grind Visual Basic to a halt (Floating Point Number Calculations, Loops on Data, and Byte Cyphers).

There's a wonderful book on the topic by A! Press (I know.. I'm a Wrox man myself) called "C++ for VB Programmers" (Link) which explains the process of using Win32 DLL's and ATL COM DLL's in your VB Application.

This process leaves VB doing what it does best, looking pretty. It also lets C++ do what it does best..... all the work ;-)