V)2.6 email client sample
in [Visual Objects]
|
From: Geoff Schaller on 12 May 2010 18:30 Tham, A couple of comments. 1. Upgrading to 2.8 (even if your app is 300,000 lines of code) is a 2-3 day effort at most. 2. If you have VOPP (which every VO'er should), it will take you half a day. 3. Vulcan, in my opinion, is a waste of time. Almost nobody uses it commercially, there is only one developer maintaining it (and even that is not full time) and the user community to support it can be counted on two hands. It will also require quite a few weeks to convert your app and quite a few months to learn to use. 4. C# will take 12 months to convert to and learn but it is fully integrated with Visual Studio (which Vulcan still falls way short of) but now you will be future-proofed. There is a middle road. Upgrade your app to 2.8 and then get Visual Studio and C# (or Vulcan) and learn dot net. Make new functionality and things hard to do in VO in C# and simply use COM to access that functionality from VO. You now get the breathing space to learn Dot net but still get to integrate that functionality in a genuine sense. So the decision would then be to choose between Vulcan and C#. What are the key differences? 1. Vulcan is very close to VO syntax so essentially it will be quicker to pick up and use. 2. C# is a new language and syntax - it will take a few months to master. 3. Vulcan has only one developer working on the compiler and language. 4. C# has a huge team that is advancing the language all the time. 5. Vulcan has a tiny user community, way smaller than even this forum. 6. C# has millions of users and free code already exists for almost anything. 7. Vulcan still has a limited integration with Visual Studio. 8. C# is totally integrated with Visual Studio and all key integration components for MS Office, Sharepoint and other products use C# and VB. There are no support packages for Vulcan. 9. Getting Vulcan support to help you with coding commercially is basically impossible. 10. Getting a new C# developer to add to your team will be easy. You decide. Some people place the highest weight on Point 1 and therefore choose Vulcan. We can't wait for Vulcan to complete itself enough for us to use so we've already gone to C#. Most of the high profile VO users who went Dot net also went C#. For most of use, Vulcan was a curiosity that just too long to get to market and is still not fully productive and useful. Cheers, Geoff
From: Barbara on 12 May 2010 13:30 Tham, I hesitate to reply as I do not want to annoy anyone, but I feel like I have to add my two cents. I understand that VO has dwindled and it is sad whenever a language cycle ends. I still use it for one client but they know it is a dead end. I spent about a year looking at Java, C#, and a few other languages and the same question kept coming up for me. Why move to a new language and remain limited with Windows? I have never used a Mac but I do have many business associates and clients that use many flavors of Unix. So I started to look at languages that would work on all the common platforms. I knew a bit of C and learning C++ was very straight forward, given the wonderful OOP background from VO. Of course I knew I needed a way to develop GUI applications and I have selected QT. It is an amazing development environment, very nice IDE, a rich set of classes, has signals and slots, lots of great samples, and it works. I have one program already done and the speed is wonderful. The QT user base is large and growing since Nokia bought the initial company. In case anyone is interested the product is amazingly free (LGPL). There is a commercial license you can purchase for Nokia support if needed. Try not to let the idea that QT is LGPL scare you away, this is worth looking into. If you are going to run on just Windows, QT supports ActiveX controls. They also have bindings for C# which could be pretty nifty if you need to port an existing C# application to another platform. I would be happy to answer any questions if anyone would like more information. Barbara > Geoff, > > Point taken. If the migrating process is tedious, I would have to make > a choice. To continue with VO or another programming language. > > > > On May 12, 6:44 am, "Geoff Schaller" > <geo...(a)softxwareobjectives.com.au> wrote: >> Tham, >> >>> And Geoff, on your suggestion to upgrade to 2.8. I have consider this >>> for quite some time but worry on migrating issues. I am doing >> >> Wrong attitude. I would be worrying about your clients and all the >> functionality they are missing out and all the performance enhancements >> YOU are missing out. Surely you have a process in place to upgrade a >> version and test? Yes? Then jeepers... just get out there and do it! >> >> Do I need to point out it has over been 5 years now? >>
From: tham chan weng on 13 May 2010 11:03 Well to sum it up most probably upgrade to vo2.8 to bridge the present gap and start the learning curve on an alternatives. Vulcan is out of the pic as it seems that its future is not encouraging. Thanks everyone. On May 13, 1:30 am, Barbara <barbara*DeleteTh...(a)easytrip.net> wrote: > Tham, > > I hesitate to reply as I do not want to annoy anyone, but I feel like I > have to add my two cents. I understand that VO has dwindled and it is > sad whenever a language cycle ends. I still use it for one client but > they know it is a dead end. > > I spent about a year looking at Java, C#, and a few other languages and > the same question kept coming up for me. Why move to a new language and > remain limited with Windows? I have never used a Mac but I do have many > business associates and clients that use many flavors of Unix. > > So I started to look at languages that would work on all the common > platforms. I knew a bit of C and learning C++ was very straight forward, > given the wonderful OOP background from VO. > > Of course I knew I needed a way to develop GUI applications and I have > selected QT. It is an amazing development environment, very nice IDE, a > rich set of classes, has signals and slots, lots of great samples, and > it works. I have one program already done and the speed is wonderful. > > The QT user base is large and growing since Nokia bought the initial > company. In case anyone is interested the product is amazingly free > (LGPL). There is a commercial license you can purchase for Nokia > support if needed. Try not to let the idea that QT is LGPL scare you > away, this is worth looking into. > > If you are going to run on just Windows, QT supports ActiveX controls. > They also have bindings for C# which could be pretty nifty if you need > to port an existing C# application to another platform. > > I would be happy to answer any questions if anyone would like more > information. > > Barbara > > > > > Geoff, > > > Point taken. If the migrating process is tedious, I would have to make > > a choice. To continue with VO or another programming language. > > > On May 12, 6:44 am, "Geoff Schaller" > > <geo...(a)softxwareobjectives.com.au> wrote: > >> Tham, > > >>> And Geoff, on your suggestion to upgrade to 2.8. I have consider this > >>> for quite some time but worry on migrating issues. I am doing > > >> Wrong attitude. I would be worrying about your clients and all the > >> functionality they are missing out and all the performance enhancements > >> YOU are missing out. Surely you have a process in place to upgrade a > >> version and test? Yes? Then jeepers... just get out there and do it! > > >> Do I need to point out it has over been 5 years now?- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text -
From: Ginny Caughey on 13 May 2010 11:09
If you do choose C# (or VB) as an additional language, you can extend VO apps with .NET DLLs using this technique: http://www.elbe-data.se/sv/vografx/visualobjectsandcsharp.pdf I've been doing this in production for almost all new work for several years now. -- Ginny Caughey www.wasteworks.com |