[GRLUG] Debian / HDD Install Linux?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Fri, 2008-09-19 at 15:28 -0400, Ben DeMott wrote:
> Thanks for the pyGTK links, I played around with PHP-GTK just out of
> curiosity (but I ran into a lot of limitations) - fast forward to now,
> I write a lot of backend database code for work in python and I
> thought it would be fun to get started with UI apps.
> Thanks again, I will run through some examples.
> What other languages do you code in Adam?

On the server side I've done an emourmous amount of PHP,  but the
general code quality of PHP applications is so terrible I avoid it these
days;  and as a platform it has some fundamental deficiencies (the type
system is a straight up hack-job).  These days most of my server side
work is in Objective-C since I work mostly on the OpenGroupware
platform.   That will be migrating to Java over time but I haven't
really gotten into that yet (Eclipse is rather intimidating).

All my script or one-off coding is in Python with some occasional Jython
<http://www.jython.org/Project/>.  Python provides all the power of Perl
while having good type handing and without the mess of CPAN.   Jython is
Python on Java so you can use Java artifacts and objects while keeping
the simplicity of a scripting language.  Java artifacts are often more
feature complete than the equivalent Python modules.   There also is,
almost literally, a Java artifact for doing *anything*.

For client side applications all my development is in C#.  For "real"
applications I believe there are only three reasonable choices: .NET,
Java, or C/C++.   As applications grow and become more complicated a
rich tool chain becomes more and more important;  the tool chain of
other environments are all very thin in comparison to the big three.  I
use C# as a managed environment is just easier to deal with than
unmanaged C/C++. Client side Java has always seemed clunky.  Even
first-rate Java client apps like DbVisualizer
<http://www.dbvis.com/products/dbvis/> never quite fit into their
environment and occasionally exhibit odd widget packing or realization
behavior.   .NET/C# also provides absolutely first-rate documentation
which greatly expedites development;  Microsoft may stink at Operating
Systems but .NET is a knocked-right-out-of-the-ball-park development
environment.  My first real development environment was Pascal
(Borland's Turbo Pascal w/Turbo Vision if you remember that) after a few
years of assembly language and <gag>BASIC</gag>.  Object Oriented Pascal
was great but never really got traction and was eventually left behind
(I think Turbo Pascal was to development environments what the Amiga was
to the home computer - amazingly progressive but just hit the market at
the wrong time).  However, Anders Hejlsberg, the guy who brought the
world Turbo Pascal and Delphi was (is?) one of the principle designers
behind C#.  In my opinion, that influence is apparent in the
language.  .NET is the first environment I've actually liked since
leaving Turbo Pascal, which was followed by many gloomy years slogging
around in C & C++.
-- 
          Consonance: an Open Source .NET OpenGroupware client.
 Contact:awilliam at whitemiceconsulting.com   http://freshmeat.net/projects/consonance/