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Cheap Software Languages for NT?
JeanBaptiste writes: "I work for a small company that refuses to spend the money on visual studio. I need this (or some other language) to do my job (which isn't programming), and for about a year now I have had to use borland C++ 3.0 for dos to do the things that need doing. I know C/pascal/basic from years ago, but have not had to write any programs for work until recently. My question: Are there any cheap/free programming languages that will make a stable winNT/2000 app?" Well, there's ActiveState, which has perl, python, and assorted other packages and tools.
www.cygwin.com! free GCC compiler!
click me! also, perl!
python even has gui bindings for windows.. hell, so does java.
Indie rock lives! b-side!
Java with IBM's Eclipse SWT should allow you to write pretty peppy stuff that uses native GUI widgets but is truly cross platform. You even have a choice between a good IDE (netbeans) and powerful text editor (jEdit) for your programming environment. Hell, you can even write your macros in Jython (or JRuby) if that floats your boat.
Somebody here will no doubt whine that Java isn't open source. If the whining seems a bit abrupt, that's because these people no doubt are in a hurry to get back to tonights checkin to the GNU Classpath project (or was it gpj?)
Mingw32 and (if you like IDEs) Dev-C++ (devcpp comes with mingw32) will create native win32 programs/dlls that directly use the msvcrt dll.
Sig? What sig?
I can't believe no one's mentioned this before.
There is a great, free win32 C compiler with all the win32 libs and a few extras of its own, called LCC.
It comes with an IDE that includes advanced debugging features and it's pretty easy to use.
The page:
www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32/
It's not clear what kinds of areas you are working on, so its not easy to recommend a tool.
Personally, I use C/C++ for general purpose apps. Nevertheless, for text/scripts Perl is hard to beat, for objects/GUIs Python is amazing, and Haskell wipes the floor with all the other languages on numerical/functional work. (OK, I admit, I have no life).
In terms of tools,
DevC++and Cygwin, work well for C/C++ development, and together form a nice little set of tools.
Perl can be found at CPANwhich has links to various interpreters and IDEs. It is a language of crazed brilliance, and is wonderfully cross-platform.
Python is really great, comes with a very well-thought-out IDE (IDLE) and a very familiar syntax. It has standard modules which will link it to C++ and Windows.
And finally, Haskell is at Haskell.org, and offers Hugs, which is probably the most advanced open-source IDE available for any language.
With so many wondrous open source tools available, I feel pretty bad about saying this, but your best bet in a corporate environment might actually be Java. It's boring, it's a little slow, its overhyped. In short, it is the Devil and whenever I have used it, I have wanted to kill myself and my neighbours. Still, its free, popular and backed by a big old corporation, its very similar to C++ and you won't get fired for choosing it. Best go with Java.
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
There's all kinds of good stuff out there.
Java, with Borland Jbuilder is free(beer)
Cgywin, with allmost all the stuff for linux for windows, and you can write windows apps.
Ruby, python, etc.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There is another basic little hole in this scheme (that may have worked 10 years ago.) Anymore, the IRS considers you an employee if you work more than something like 50% time at a given employer (why I stopped being an independent contractor by the way.) The only way around this that I'm aware of is to become a corporation. So you are talking about EACH employee becoming their own corporation.
Lots of trouble just because you don't use something that is already free! Why not Perl/TK or something equivalent if you have to do gui work? Then as others have mentioned, there is cygwin. There are LOTS of options here from the opensource community. Lay-off the bad advice for how the company should re-form itself (the IRS is wise to this, and will still hold the company liable for lack of paying withholding, etc!)
Have you compiled your kernel today??
You can use cygwin to develop mingw apps which don't use any of the cygwin runtime (they use the MS runtime dlls which are on all windows systems), and are thus freely distributable as commercial binaries.
The .NET Framework is also freely available for download. Again, it comes with everything you need to build .NET applications, except the nice UI (use vim/emacs/sharpdevelop...)
The root for the SDK downloads is here
That advice is a good way to get in trouble with the IRS in addition to the BSA.
Here's a big clue - the IRS is well aware of this trick, and it has a bunch of questions is asks to determine whether these people are truly independent contractors or if they're de facto employees. If they're employees, you get hit with back (payroll) taxes and penalties and basically have a miserable life for a few years as the IRS investigates whether you're a tax cheat elsewhere.
I don't remember the full list of 20 questions, but I do recall that many issues came down to independence, duration of employment, etc. Are your employees... independent consultants registered as a bona fide local business (LLC, DBA, etc?) Do they carry business liability insurance in addition to personal policies? Do they work for you exclusively?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
There are many alternatives for developing with free (as in beer) tools on Win32.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net