Related
What are the best IDE's / IDE plugins / Tools, etc for programming with CUDA / MPI etc?
I've been working in these frameworks for a short while but feel like the IDE could be doing more heavy lifting in terms of scaling and job processing interactions.
(I usually use Eclipse or Netbeans, and usually in C/C++ with occasional Java, and its a vague question but I can't think of any more specific way to put it)
This is not really an answer, but I feel so confined by the comment box ...
I do a fair amount of MPI programming, OpenMP too, but not CUDA and GPU stuff. I write mainly Fortran, some C++. I'm still using Emacs as my editor, and for the other things that Emacs does well. I use a separate parallel debugger (DDT, I've used TotalView in the past, more a question of which one is on the machine than which one I prefer) and a performance profiling tool called OPT (like DDT produced by Allinea Software).
I have looked, though not for a year or so, for plug-ins for NetBeans and Eclipse (former preferred, latter too Java-centric and too heavy these days) for parallel programming. What's out there is better for C++ than for Fortran. But I haven't yet come across any plug-in which has really made it far enough out of the research lab to be useful enough to make me change from the old ways.
I'll be as interested as you to see what other SOers recommend though right now it doesn't look very promising.
I'm writing a compiler that converts source code (written in a small imperative programming language) to Intel AT&T 32-bit assembler.
I tend to spend a lot of time debugging, because of nasty offset-mistakes etc. in the generated code, and I would like to know if anyone knows of a tool to "walk through" the generated assembler code step-by-step, visualizing what's on the stack etc.
I use Ubuntu Linux as my development platform, and I'm comfortable with the terminal -- a GUI-program would be nice though. Does it exist? Or is there a good reason it doesn't (maybe the problem isn't so straightforward..?)
If you have good ideas for approaching debugging tasks in assembly code, I'll be glad to hear from you!
I like EDB (Evan's Debugger) on Linux. It has a nice, easy-to-use, QT4-based GUI. Its developer's goal is to make it similar to OllyDbg. And it's being actively maintained:
EDB on FreshMeat
I'm pretty sure it's installable through Synaptic on Ubuntu as well. Enjoy!
Is the end result of the compile process something that you can actually execute, and therefore examine in a debugger? If so the Data Display Debugger (ddd) might be useful.
My experience with debuggers such as Olly and EDB is quite sparse, so I wasn't able to solve my problem with those. I ended up
scattering calls around to a Debug function in the source code, nailing down bad register values
letting the compiler output HTML-formatted code with useful metadata for different iterations in the liveness analysis etc.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 6 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm trying to find a programming language I feel really comfortable learning and using for desktop/GUI application development. I realize it's unlikely that any language meets ALL of these criteria, but I'd like to find one that meets as many as possible. I've listed the following features ROUGHLY in order from most desirable/important to least.
Ideal Language Features:
Code Style: C/Java-like
GUI Development: Easy, elegant, and platform-Native styling
Community: Widely documented, active development, friendly & helpful, unity of focus
Object-oriented
Garbage Collection, no worrying about pointers, etc
Native compilation, NO 3rd-party runtimes like GTK or .NET
Multi-platform (can be compiled on *nix, Windows, Mac)
Reasonably fast
Mixed typing (soft-typed, OR both soft- and strict-typed -- i.e. Pike)
Background:
Most importantly, I need something that is straight foward and reasonably familiar, and something that isn't going to require a deep understanding of platform-specific APIs. I can't afford to spend a lot of time learning to develop Win32 apps in C++ for example. I've used wxWidgets, and liked the basic usage, but I'm really wanting to use a language with garbage collection, dynamic typing, and so on.
My frustration with Java, C#, and others is the need for a 3rd party runtime. I don't want end users to have to worry about installing and maintaining a separate platform.
Now then. Ideas??
Haha, due to the constraints you imposed you are now left with HTML and javascript. Good luck :)
The answer to your question is simply: None.
You excluded all desirable languages and platforms in your question.
I'd suggest you throw away your aversion against .NET and go with Delphi Prism. It's not C#, it is cross-platform compatible (everything is officially supported on Mono) and you can create applications that bring the runtime with them (Mono as part of your application).
I'd suggest Groovy and Griffon. Groovy is a dynamic language (like Ruby / Python) that runs on the JVM and integrates with millions of Java libraries out there easily. Griffon is a high-productivity RAILS-like framework for developing GUIs. Groovy has been around for 5 years and has a robust community and is supported by SpringSource (now division of VMWare). Griffon is a bit younger, but also has a fairly robust community.
These seem to fit your criteria.
I know I switched from Java to Grails (web framework written in Groovy that's similar to Rails), and haven't looked back.
Have you looked at QT? It's a really great GUI library and there are bindings for just about every language in common usage. There is a ton of documentation and a wide community. You mention that you want to do something in a language with garbage collection and dynamic typing, but rule out Python and Ruby, which are the 2 most popular languages that fit this criteria (also, they both have great QT bindings, I use pyQT4 and it is just awesome). They really aren't that far from what you do in Java/C, you just end up writing a lot less.
Wow you really limit your choices. I'm going to jump on the QT bandwagon and recommend C++.
Most of the objects in QT inherit from another object that sort of does it's own garbage collection.
There is incredible documentation out there for it.
QT is extremely powerful and has most of the elements you would like, and is extensible if you want to modify elements yourself.
If you do a static build for your release build the people you give the application to won't need distribute any other libraries as they will all be built into the .exe file.
The next iteration of Delphi is said to be cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). I think it meets all your requirements except garbage collection.
No language meets all of those restrictions. Technically, it sounds like you're asking for something almost identical to Java but then explicitly disallow Java for unstated reasons. Conceptually, it sounds like you're looking for Python or Ruby but disallow them for using slightly different syntax.
Given the order of priorities, I think the closest you'll find in existing languages might be C with the Boehm GC and GTK+ for the GUI (and GLib for the object system). You do say "No GTK" under "No third-party runtime required", but I'm not sure what "runtime" you refer to here, since IIRC it's just a bunch of C libraries.
Given the specificity of the requirements, I think your best bet is to write your own language. Compilers really aren't that hard to write anymore. There are off-the-shelf tools to help with parsing and code generation and math and text processing and GC and so on. Once you get started you'll probably find people willing to help port it. Many existing cross-platform GUI libraries (like wxWidgets) use C/C++ so if you have a decent FFI you can use that, too. You want "support" and "documented" but if you're the primary author you'll understand it better than anybody. The hardest part about a language is design, and it sounds like you have a picture in your head of exactly what the language should be already.
There are a few if you can accept either WxWindows or GTK or QT as a toolkit.
In the order of my personal preference would be:
Eiffel Studio
D with the D-GTK binding
F#
javascript?
might be not the fastest one and doesn't fully address all your needs, but hey... its everywhere and easy to learn
didn't read after the list, but with prism You can probably achieve most your goals.
or You can try Qt and c++ autopointers
Silverlight could actually give you enough cross-platform availability to use C#/.NET, but I am not sure it fits all your requirements.
Sounds like Action Script 3 will make you happy. But it's more web oriented but you could try to make a projector or an Air application. I think it's a good solution because you can do anything with AS3 (image, video, text, sound video text keyboard and mouse input, pear to pear and 3d since flash 10, ...) and it's cross platform and you can use it on the web or your desktop :)
If you are a pure root coder (using vim and only command line for ex) you can make your whole app without using the flash ide, by just writing your as files and compiling them with mxmlc (that comes with the free flex sdk).
I suggest Python. Although it doesn't fit your first requirement of coding style, but it fits all your other requirements!
GUI Development: Easy, elegant, and platform-Native styling --> Yes
I'd suggest that you try wxPython (wxWidgets for Python). This is so "native" on Python that about 90% of all the wxWidgets code examples on the Internet are for Python! I've personally used TkInter, Gtk and wxPython. All of them are well supported on Python. My personal choice is wx.
Community: Widely documented, active development, friendly & helpful, unity of focus --> YES
Object-oriented --> Yes
Garbage Collection, no worrying about pointers, etc --> Yes
Native compilation, NO 3rd-party runtimes like GTK or .NET --> Yes. - You can eiter:
pack a single dll with your code - or
use py2exe which is able to create a single executable out of your project
Multi-platform (can be compiled on *nix, Windows, Mac) --> Yes.
Reasonably fast --> Yes. Well, it's not the fastest out there, but close enough that some serious projects are done in Python only.
Mixed typing (soft-typed, OR both soft- and strict-typed -- i.e. Pike) --> Yes.
Regarding your first requirement I'd say that you should give Python at least a try. It requires very little effort to get started. There is a 2-hour tutorial which gives you a serious introduction. There's a Basic to Advanced tutorial where I'd almost guarantee that you'll be writing your first application on the second day.
I also feel your pain Brian. Most time when I ask questions about desktop GUIs the only answer I get is: "Make it Web". You really nailed it, since your question is still open inspite some really non-constructive answers...
I've been watching closely JavaFX 2, it solves some of Swing problems and seems very promising. This may be the only thing Oracle did right since getting Java from Sun.
UPDATE:
.NET is finally becoming an open-source, cross-platform solution. .NET Core allows native compilation for multiple devices.
The new .NET experience is exactly what I was looking for when I asked this question several years ago.
Original:
Lots of good suggestions, despite being salted with negativity throughout.
I think I'm going to go with C# and Mono. I like C# well enough syntactically (I've been accused often of being shallow, but the syntax of a language is just as important to me as its features, because I spend a lot of time writing in that particular syntax). Although similar to Java, it has a few unique features that I appreciate, and I think the community seems more open-minded.
My biggest complaint about Java besides performance, frankly, is the community. It seems infected with an excess of arrogance, and it also seems to be very fragmented in terms of support for and development on various overlapping libraries, tools, and so on. The community surrounding Mono seems much more organized.
Actually, so does .NET itself, for that matter. Sun is a big enterprise company that seems every bit as confused about what it IS and what it DOES as Microsoft or IBM, yet they seem to be doing an even worse job of leading and organizing their platform than Microsoft, which is pretty tragic.
Ok, this is an interesting question to ask because everyone has a say in it.
What is your favorite library to program in for GUI's and the language that you program it in. Give a short reason why. (ex. Gtk, Qt, Windows, etc..) Just an FYI, this includes any scripting language that you program a GUI in Python, Perl etc...
Frankly I've always done Gtk in C, but I'm starting to warm up to Qt in C++ with the new KDE. I've never been a big fan of Windows programming.
ChrisW. stated that I did not give a reason for Gtk/Qt so here goes. I started with Gtk because when I started programming GUI's I was working in Linux and there was more Gtk information available. Started utilizing Qt when I started working more in KDE but really the move to Qt was based on trying to move to C++ and learn more languages. I've never been a fan of basic Windows programming, but I do enjoy a little DirectX now and then :P
Recently I had the opportunity to work with both wxWindows and QT, while some time ago I wrote some small programs using FLTK and Gtk. My conclusion is that widget libraries tend to be very similar; each one has its strenghts and its quirks.
Instead of advocating a specific library, then, I would like to advocate the use of high level languages in GUI programming: the development cycle is way faster and GUI programs are rarely CPU bound, so the performance hit is rarely a problem.
If a GUI program has to perform some intense computations, just develop a core library in C or C++, but keep the interface in Python or whatever other interpreted language.
People like to bash Swing for being old, slow and ugly, but it's just not true. Swing is mature, is faster than ever on Java SE 6/10, looks decent enough, and is tolerable to program. Above all, I've found Java + Swing to be the most trouble-free cross-platform combination. It also works remarkably seamlessly with Jython (Python on JVM).
SWT could also be an option, but so far I've been happy with Swing.
I realise you're focusing on application GUIs but if you want a quick, powerful and fun way to visualize anything on your computer, you can't go past Processing
From the site:
Processing is an open source
programming language and environment
for people who want to program images,
animation, and interactions. It is
used by students, artists, designers,
researchers, and hobbyists for
learning, prototyping, and production.
It is created to teach fundamentals of
computer programming within a visual
context and to serve as a software
sketchbook and professional production
tool. Processing is an alternative to
proprietary software tools in the same
domain.
WPF in particular, and XAML in all its reincarnations (WPF, Silverlight, Moonlight).
C# on top of .Net 3.5/Mono: $0
Visual Studio Express/MonoDevelop: $0
Being able to tell the designer "make my program pretty" and continue coding features: priceless.
I liked writing to video memory under DOS: for an animated game (i.e. an Asteroids clone), that was as fast (performant) as I knew how to do it (certainly faster that using the BIOS API).
This is really a somewhat subjective question, so there is no best or correct answer to it. The following is based on my (limited) experience:
I personally like wxWidgets with PLT Scheme for writing simple but flexible GUIs. There are much more advanced toolkits, but I usually do not need their features. wxWidgets is flexible and the Scheme interface follows Scheme traditions of being powerful with a relatively simple structure. I like the fact that wxWidgets is portable, and yet tries not to actually draw its own widgets, but can use native or common toolkits of the environment it is used under. It is written in C++ but I never used its C++ interface.
That is not to say that in my opinion Scheme will generally be the optimal language to write your application in. In fact there are many kinds of applications I would not write in Scheme, even though I like the language. But regarding the GUI programming part, that is my favourite because of its straight-forwardness, and the way that a functional language like Scheme goes well with declarative-style GUI programming.
Of course you will not have the same level of control when using that as when having your program involved in every stage of the window construction and input reaction, by using an event loop (such as with Win32API or Xt/Intrinsics). But that is not always convenient and often unnecessary, and seems to become decreasingly common.
Note: The wxWindows toolkit was renamed wxWidgets, but my installation of a rather recent version of PLT Scheme still comes with the older wxWindows. I am not sure whether there is an updated package of wxWidgets available or if it is going to be included in a future version of PLT Scheme.
Qt4 without question for me. Now that it has an LGPL license it makes sense for all kinds of applications that previously weren't possible. Additionally, it changes C++ in ways that dramatically improve the experience of using the language. (Things like a foreach and forever loop, atomic operations on integers, and memory management)
Gtk and is the primary window-drawing graphical subsystem I have experience working with (and is therefore my favorite XD).
As far as general graphics subsystems go, however, OpenGL (typically in combination with GLUT) has been an easy and productive ride for me. Regrettably I have little DirectX experience to compare to, though :S
For writing souped-up versions of standard Windows components, I loved Borland's VCL, and am very pleased with .NET.
I'm teaching (or trying to teach) computer programming to a grad-student. Her previous experience amounts to little more than writing spreadsheet formulae. Which IDE or text editor should I recommend?
Please bear in mind that:
I only meet my student about once a week.
She uses Windows and I use Linux.
She doesn't have a community of users on hand.
She doesn't have much money to spend.
Edit: The languages she's learning at the moment are Perl and R. (Sorry ... for forgetting to mention them earlier.)
Edit: Thanks for all your answers!
The most highly recommended editors are jEdit and Notepad++.
If I can find a way to give my student adequate support for Notepad++ (e.g. by running it under Wine) or if I think that she can manage without support from me, then I'll recommend that. If not, I'll go for jEdit.
Apologies, once again, to those who saw the question before I got around to listing the languages that I'm teaching.
The Visual Studio Express products are all free. Unless the fact that you're using Linux changes things :)
Start off simple. Do not not scare her with an IDE! They are overwhelming at first and are not core to developing software. I learnt rudimentary Java with Crimson Editor.
If I started again I'd probably go for Notepad++.
Eclipse might be a good option (if a little overwhelming at first).
You obviously need to look at a cross-platform IDE. Eclipse is one of the best in this regard, as well as having support for many languages. It also comes with a good set of tutorials.
Since you didn't mention what programming language (guess it doesn't matter) you were teaching, I'll stick to something that supports multiple programming languages and multiple platforms. Given your situation, I would use jEdit (http://www.jedit.org).
jEdit is a programmer's text editor with hundreds of plugins, auto indent, and syntax highlighting for more than 130 languages and since it's written in Java, it runs beautifully on Linux, Windows or MAC. Hope this helps.
The best, most documented, IDE that is free in my opinion is Visual Studio Express. There are tons of blogs, howtos, videos, training, etc. You can find more information about them here:
http://www.microsoft.com/Express/
Also, if you are a student, Microsoft provides an entire stack of software free to students just for this purpose. This is through a program called DreamSpark. Included is an operating system, the professional version of the IDE, SQL Server, XNA Game studio and Expression. Any student can get this. More information is here:
https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/
Hope that helps.
I have used Notepad++]1 a lot for various editing tasks, and I find it quite useful and competent.
Depends on the programming language. FoR C/C++ and anything .net Visual Studio is the way to go. The Express edition is free.
Eclipse or Jedit, if Eclipse is too complicated. jEdit is cross platform, free and supports a number of different languages.
Crimson Editor is also very nice; it's similar to Edit Plus. Syntax highlighting, tabs, etc.
Notepad++ for editing is awesome to me: it's Windows only, but maybe you can use it with Wine under Linux. But if you want someting more like an IDE, then Eclipse, or NetBean (both use java) can be very useful, although they are very resource expensive on old PC.
My suggestion is Textpad. You can teach her javascript, all the basic, and some advanced concepts are there. It's fun for the student see the output in a browser, and you can even teach a little HTML if the mood strikes.
Komodo Edit from active vision is free, open source, and available for Windows and Linux. Very nice features.
Otherwise, Emacs as it is available on both platforms and can be configured for CUA controls.
The Cream version of VIM is also a good option.
It really depends on the language you are teaching her.
EditPlus is a good simple editor. Free trial version and pretty cheap license.
Dev-C++ as a non-MS alternative.
Quote: "Bloodshed Dev-C++ is a full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the C/C++ programming language. It uses Mingw port of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) as it's compiler. Dev-C++ can also be used in combination with Cygwin or any other GCC based compiler."
Code::Blocks is also another good one, free and cross platform. Unless you need something for using VB / C# or other .NET languages as it is mostly C/C++. For the .NET languages on linux I would recommed MonoDevelop
Aptana is very handy for web-oriented programming.
http://www.aptana.com
That depends at least in part on the programming language you intend to teach her. That said, you might want to take a look at Eclipse. Though it started primarily as a Java IDE, it's been extended via plugins to support many others (including C/C++, Flex, Haskell, and ColdFusion, to name a few), and can fairly easily be adapted to a new language if support isn't already out there.
Add to that the fact that the IDE is cross-platform so you can both use the same tool on your platforms of choice, and it looks like this might be a good fit.
I'd recommend SciTE, as it's both available for *nix and Windows and free (as in beer). It supports pretty much anything you'd expect from a decent editor and, if she goes on to use it, quite customizable. It also isn't too complex, so it should be easy for her to get going with it.
+1 to the Notepad++ suggestion - Anything I do that's not .Net-related I do in that.
For Java, BlueJ is an excellent teaching IDE. It doesn't confuse the new student with a lot of advanced functionality (stuff they won't use for years to come). Eclipse is a great IDE, but there is a LOT of stuff there they could drown in. The same is true for Visual Studio, but I don't know of a simpler IDE for .NET languages.
You may also consider Ruby with Scite as a teaching option. The IDE isn't that fancy, but along with the ease-of-startup of learning Ruby this could work very well. Ruby certainly has some advantages over Java/C#/C++ for the beginning student (mostly in that you don't have to create a full class with a main method just to get a program running).
For the easy to teach Component Pascal language (a successor to Niklaus Wirth's Pascal and Oberon) try the free, open source BlackBox IDE and the book Computing Fundamentals by Stan Warford.
Regards,
tamberg
If you are writing software targeted at a Windows platform then Visual Studio is more or less the standard IDE. Since you are teaching a graduate student I would recommend getting the academic license for the professional edition if they are going to be writing a lot of software, otherwise the express editions should be enough for leaning purposes.
In terms of text editors, the one that I currently use the most is Notepad++ which is free, open source, and support a wide variety of features that are useful to software development. There are also also a number of useful plug-ins available for it as well.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned vi. I'll argue that the less your tool does for you in the beginning the better coder you'll be in the end. For a newbie, give them syntax highlighting and some helpers for dealing with blocks and lines. Something like vi is great, emacs is also fine, or if you absolutely must be on Windows, something like notepad++ or jedit will be decent. The main point is to learn to program before you learn to let your IDE insert code that you don't understand for you.
MultiEdit
Extremely powerfull (and extensible on emacs level) text editor with many IDE features (integration with compilers/debuggers etc). Beats all other suggested editors on every aspect.
Much easier to learn and use than editors with UNIX/terminal roots like vi or Emacs.
Not free (not too expensive though), and requires some learning to use effectively.
Another full blown IDE is SharpDevelop. It's OpenSource.
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/
Zeus - http://www.zeusedit.com
I have to mention PSPad.
It is very good, feature rich free editor. I have used UtraEdit and finally found free alternative in PSPad