Programming for windows

[cureless]

Hi folks.

I'm a experienced Linux user. A while back I was forced to do some programming assignments in Windows for school. I remember using Delphi. That was a while back. As you can imagine, I don't own Delphi (or any other comertial programming environment for windows). What languages, compilers, environments can I get for Windows that are free (hopefuly open source, but not a necessity). Yeah, I know gcc works, but I want something that allows me to do little windows and stuff sort of easy. (i.e. I don't want to learn the windows API, what ever that was called).

Any chance of something like perl or python with a good gui library. C/C++, etc are fine. Java is not ok unless I can compile a stand alone executable.

Suggestions? (or am I dreaming)

cl

 

[Nothinman]

Borland has some free for personal use RAD tools, I know JBuilder and Kylix (Delphi) for sure. But read the licensing, I believe the free version's VCL is under the GPL, so any apps you make would have to be GPL'd unless you buy the Pro (or whatever it's called) version.

 

[MGMorden]

Python is available for windows. I've never used it but I do know you can't compile an executable (it's scripted just like it is in Linux). If you want to get REALLY old-school, I remember using a compiler called BasicBasic (for guess what . . . BASIC!!!) that could compile for Windows and for DOS (and was really cool in that a Windows program with buttons, scrollbars,etc. could become a DOS program by simply recompiling your source with the DOS compiler). I think it was sharware, but you can at least try it out if you can find it.

Those are about the only simple ones I know of. As far as other free compilers for Windows (but not simple by any means) theres:

Bloodshed Dev-C (they have a PASCAL compiler too I think)
Mingw32 (gcc)
DJGPP (pretty much gcc)
Borland B++ (this is a c++ compiler)
a few more that I can't remember . . .


If you really want simple though, drop some cash on a copy of VisualBasic. It's about the quickest and simplest way to make Windows applications that I've ever seen.