Re: gtkada/glade info needed

[Marin David Condic <mcondic.nospam@acm.org>]

DuckE wrote:

> Excuse me... but I installed MSVC++ 6.0 and decided to give it a try.  I
> diligently typed in the code for the sample "scribble" application.  Guess
> what.  It didn't run.
>
> I had to download a service pack off the net to get it to work.  I think
> they're up to SP4 now in MSVC++ 6.0.
>
> I didn't find MSVC++ easy to understand, nor did I find building
> applications using the Wizards to be intuitive or easy.  Now if you want ot
> make a case for VB or Delphi, I'll go along with that.
>

O.K. Your experience with it runs contrary to mine. When I installed it, I
fired it up, pointed it at a body of C++ code we had around here and told it to
get started compiling. It did. Maybe the release you got was buggy. It
certainly doesn't speak well of *any* application if the "demo" stuff doesn't
work.

Also, please observe that I did not say that MSVC++ was intuitively obvious to
even the most casual observer. It is not. Nor is Windows programming in
general. However, it *is* well documented and I did not encounter any
statements in the documentation claiming that it *was* easy to intuit your way
through it.

If you like VB or Delphi better - fine. I am not trying to make the case that
MSVC++ is the greatest of all possible development kits. I can certainly
imagine better ones - maybe someone else has done the same. My case is *only*
that it comes as a complete suite of stuff that all works together and all from
a single source. There are some very nice tools out there for Ada. There are
some very good compilers and GUI development suites and all that stuff like
that there. And often the price is a lot more attractive than that of MSVC++.
You'll just have to visit a dozen different web pages to get them all and they
won't all just run nicely with each other from the same root window and you'll
probably have to visit a dozen other web sites to find documentation that
explains what all the stuff is about and how to use it. (Some of this comes
from the fact that many of the tools are offshoots or bindings to other tools.
X is a binding to Y which was built on top of Z and X just refers you to the
documentation for Y which refers you to Z and if you weren't born knowing Z,
you're SOL. Did that make sense? :-)

As a consumer of development tools, I'm merely expressing what I'd like to see
in the way of an Ada development kit. It is the wise and successful capitalist
that tries to give the customer what he wants. :-) I'd be more than happy to
talk to any vendors about what I like in MSVC++ and what I don't like about it.
Send me a marketing survey.

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/
Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m
Visit my web site at:  http://www.mcondic.com/

    "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey
    and car keys to teenage boys."

        --   P. J. O'Rourke
======================================================================