Just Researching

[problematic.child]

The company that i work for currently sales a character-based medical billing
software package. They are interested in converting to a gui-based package.
Currently they are using the DB/C language which offers gui capabilities but
nothing even close when compared to newer languages. For the time being we
are converting to the DB/C gui abilities - as an immediate change - but in
the future we would like to venture out into a much more robust language.

I would like to hear the opinions of the pro's/con's of the different
programming languages and any recommendations you might have? Also, if you
know of any links, or books that i might be able to pick up that would good
too.

Also, currently every customer is running on sco unix openserver servers.
Are there any languages that are capable of running a client/server
application with a unix server or because of .net do all of the possible
languages have to run on Windows Server servers?

--
Brian Stevenson
Programmer/Analyst
M & M Computer Services

[Tom Serface]

I would use either C++ with MFC or C# for the user interface. I think the
DB/C datastore can be accessed though ODBC so you should be able to get at
the data although their interface may make it easier. If you are just doing
data entry windows, and I am choking while saying this, you might find it
easist to use VB since that is great for building forms and hooking them
into databases and reports really quickly and is very easy to maintain and
change.

My two sticks...

Tom

"problematic.child" <pr**************@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:13**********************************@microsof t.com...

The company that i work for currently sales a character-based medical
billing
software package. They are interested in converting to a gui-based
package.
Currently they are using the DB/C language which offers gui capabilities
but
nothing even close when compared to newer languages. For the time being
we
are converting to the DB/C gui abilities - as an immediate change - but in
the future we would like to venture out into a much more robust language.

I would like to hear the opinions of the pro's/con's of the different
programming languages and any recommendations you might have? Also, if
you
know of any links, or books that i might be able to pick up that would
good
too.

[problematic.child]

Tom,
Thanks for the information - Personally i am interested in C # but i
have used Visual Basic in the past and did find it very easy to code in;
however if it came down to it i would take the harder language if it meant a
better package.

I have thought of C ++ but have not had much involvement with it so i do not
really have anythign to base an opinion on.

Brian
--
Brian Stevenson
Programmer/Analyst
M & M Computer Services
"Tom Serface" wrote:

I would use either C++ with MFC or C# for the user interface. I think the
DB/C datastore can be accessed though ODBC so you should be able to get at
the data although their interface may make it easier. If you are just doing
data entry windows, and I am choking while saying this, you might find it
easist to use VB since that is great for building forms and hooking them
into databases and reports really quickly and is very easy to maintain and
change.

My two sticks...

Tom

"problematic.child" <pr**************@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:13**********************************@microsof t.com...

The company that i work for currently sales a character-based medical
billing
software package. They are interested in converting to a gui-based
package.
Currently they are using the DB/C language which offers gui capabilities
but
nothing even close when compared to newer languages. For the time being
we
are converting to the DB/C gui abilities - as an immediate change - but in
the future we would like to venture out into a much more robust language.

I would like to hear the opinions of the pro's/con's of the different
programming languages and any recommendations you might have? Also, if
you
know of any links, or books that i might be able to pick up that would
good
too.

[Tom Serface]

If you have used VB before (like a while ago) you may find it to be quite
different these days :o), however I think if you have you could use either
VB or C# just as easily. C++ is a little more difficult to learn, but it
has the benefit of being able to compile native (and somewhat faster) code
or managed code and there are tons of libraries available (illustrations and
such). I use C++ so I'm a little biased. You could develop your C++
program with or without .NET Framework, but... like I said, if it's mostly
form based then C# or VB will work with WinForms and the upgrade to WPF
(WinFX or Windows Vista) should be more straightforward.

Tom

"problematic.child" <pr**************@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:22**********************************@microsof t.com...

Tom,
Thanks for the information - Personally i am interested in C # but i
have used Visual Basic in the past and did find it very easy to code in;
however if it came down to it i would take the harder language if it meant
a
better package.

I have thought of C ++ but have not had much involvement with it so i do
not
really have anythign to base an opinion on.

[problematic.child]

Tom,

To be quite honest the software has a lot of everything from user entry -
pritning reports. ALso, being that DB/C spawned (if my history serves me
correctly) from the C language i had originally thought that C ++ might be
easier for the porgrammers around here to adjust to. I could be mistaken as
i agree when you say that the languages have been changing regulalry over the
last four years or so. I used to use VB 6.0 about 3 years ago but i did not
have a chance to really dive into it but i had heard that VB.Net is quite
different.

You meantioned DB/C in the first message - Have you worked with it before?

Brian
--
Brian Stevenson
Programmer/Analyst
M & M Computer Services
"Tom Serface" wrote:

If you have used VB before (like a while ago) you may find it to be quite
different these days :o), however I think if you have you could use either
VB or C# just as easily. C++ is a little more difficult to learn, but it
has the benefit of being able to compile native (and somewhat faster) code
or managed code and there are tons of libraries available (illustrations and
such). I use C++ so I'm a little biased. You could develop your C++
program with or without .NET Framework, but... like I said, if it's mostly
form based then C# or VB will work with WinForms and the upgrade to WPF
(WinFX or Windows Vista) should be more straightforward.

Tom

"problematic.child" <pr**************@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:22**********************************@microsof t.com...

Tom,
Thanks for the information - Personally i am interested in C # but i
have used Visual Basic in the past and did find it very easy to code in;
however if it came down to it i would take the harder language if it meant
a
better package.

I have thought of C ++ but have not had much involvement with it so i do
not
really have anythign to base an opinion on.