On Sun, Dec 30, 2001 at 01:00:23AM +0800, Aldous B Bernardo wrote:
| I would like to ask for some advice on what programming tools can I
| use in developing Linux apps. I've been developing Windoze
| applications for about 3 years and would like to shift to Linux.
| I'm interested in GUI tools for X, preferably using KDE ( Gnome
| would be great too). i've been using Delphi for my Windoze apps- I
| know that there is Kylix but I would like to know of similar if not
| better tools. Console programming tools would be nice too.
A major difference between windows and unix systems is :
windows doesn't come with much in terms of useful utilities or
development tools, thus you pay big bucks for MS Visual Studio
or some similar tools
unix systems (usually) come with a compiler, and they also have
editors and many useful utilities for working with files
A result of this is many windows developers expect to find a single,
large, program (an IDE) to use for development. There are some IDEs
for linux/unix, but most of them are incomplete or immature.
Most unix developers are content to combine many small utilities
together to get their work done. On unix it is common for people to
pick an advanced editor (I prefer vim, others like emacs) and learn
many of its advanced features. Makefiles are used to automate the
build process, which can include any shell command one might use
otherwise. Various tools such as "ctags", "grep -r" and "find" make
working with a tree of source files fairly easy.
Unfortuantely for you Delphi is a proprietary windows-only programming
language. I recommend learning python both for it's openness and
portability, but also for it's power and ease of use and readability.
It is my favorite programming language. For a development environment
I recommend vim (for console, gvim for X) in combination with bash,
ctags, grep, find, make, and any other utility that does some task
that you need. The learning curve is fairly steep because you will be
learning a wide array of programs and won't have a single location to
search for help, but the payoff is well worth it. To top it off, once
you have learned these utilities you can use them on windows as well
if you install the cygwin utilities.
-D
--
A violent man entices his neighbor
and leads him down a path that is not good.
Proverbs 16:29
