Simple Windows Development Tools?

fwc asks: "Over the past few years, I've been fortunate to be able to avoid writing a Windows GUI application, however this good luck is coming to an end. In the next few weeks, I need to write a fairly simple application which will need to display data received from a serial port in a decoded (and graphical) form via a Windows GUI. Unfortunately, my skills in this area are out of date, since I haven't written any GUI apps for close to 10 years. Because this program needs to be fairly small and easy to install, the use of Perl/tk isn't a valid option. What options do I have to build a small application on Windows, without a large learning curve?"

Comments

Re:VB

[Kell_pt]

Hi,

There is no reason whatsoever to use VB, unless you like a poor and dinosaur syntax. I encourage you to try Delphi, or even Borland's C++ Builder. You can get a personal edition of Delphi. You can then choose to target .NET or Win32 as you prefer.
If you feel like Java you can download Borland's JBuilder Foundation edition for free as well.

Explore your options. I find Delphi to be real easy for GUIs, mainly due to the power of Borland's VCL (Visual Control Library). And you won't be throwing away your time if you later want to move to any other language (I use BC++ now, I prefer C++ syntax), because the IDE, the tools, the graphical elements (controls) and the libraries are the same (C++Builder, C#Builder, etc).

Good luck! :)