[nerd]

I've written 2 Cocoa programs, one that controls a relay box via HTTP requests and one that plays back 4 RTSP streams in a window. I wrote these for work and run on them on a Mac Mini that we've snuck in under the radar (the company I work for won't buy Macs).

I'm about to get a promotion and I'll have to start writing some more programs that mainly deal with RS232 and parsing the data into XML files. These programs will eventually be used by some of the other people is our group so I won't be able to get away writing them for the Mac. I'm trying to decide between learning Realbasic or C#.

With Realbasic I can still code on my Mac and compile for Windows and Linux. The syntax for Realbasic is more foreign to me but it seems like it would be easy to pick up. Learning Realbasic will also give me another tool I know on the Mac. My other option is learning C# and since I already know some C via Objective C I think the learning curve might be a little easier then Realbasic. The problem is I'll only be able to use C# for Windows apps which I have no big desire to program for (outside of the work stuff).

What do you guys think? Realbasic looks like it'll fit the bill just fine for what I need to do but one of my apps may need to draw animated graphics super emposed on the Windows desktop and I'm not sure how Realbasic would handle something like that.

[numero]

I can't answer your part about animated graphics, but I can speak to the RB vs C# part.

RB history: I've been using this off and on for 5 or 6 years now. Love it. Although my present job has me in Java and Obj-C (which is OK).

C# history: 1 week, but seems like a lifetime. We need to generate sample code to demonstrate the use of a DLL for our customers. As low man on the totem pole I drew the short straw to generate the C# examples. What a POS. For all of its rants on "developers, developers, developers, developers" (that brings a smile to my lips every time I think about it) MS sure can't turn out dev. tools. My biggest gripe is with the UI layout tools. All of the listener methods (button_clicked) are thrown into one file. In RB events are only shown for the object you have selected.

If you learn RB then you can write on the Mac and deploy on Win or Linux. You can choose to stay with more generic calls and then your program will run on all platforms or you can include platform specific code and then deploy on only that platform -- so you can probably get that animated graphic thing to work.

MS has the C# Express as a free download and you can get a limited time demo of RB. I'd get both and try them out. Coming from the Mac though you will probably find RB the better tool.

-numero

[nerd]

I just read through some of the RB manual and it does look more straight forward and simpler to get done some of the things I want to do. Networking and serial control seems a lot more simpler and serial looks way easier then it does with C.

I went to the book store and I could grasp what was happening with C# as I looked through code but I didn't see any good books that taught the GUI part of programming under Windows. All the books focused on creating command line code with only one chapter on GUIs.

I think I'll do RB for my projects plus I have platform portability with it. I need to have fun while I do it and sitting on Windows all day for work is one thing but to do it coding all day would be another. I'll get them to spring for the license and manuals and doesn't seem like it'd take me longer then a week or 2 to get up to speed on it. Thanks for the reply.

[NeXTLoop]

REALbasic is a very powerful development environment. There will always be naysayers who claim that RB produces applications that look like crap in their native operating systems, RB produces large apps, etc. But in reality, you need to keep a couple of things in mind.....

1. RB has a low barrier to entry. It allows a relative novice to very quickly begin programming. That is, almost entirely, what causes so many RB apps to look "amateurish". An application is only going to be as good as the programmer creating it. If you're a good program, who pays attention to detail, then your app will reflect that.

2. The reason that RB creates larger apps than a Cocoa application is because everything is self-contained in an RB app. Unlike VB, there are no dependencies to some OS-level library.

So, having taken the long way around the barn, I'd say go with RB. Its fast, effective, and will serve you properly... if you take the time to do it right.

[Chuckit]

A REALbasic app can be every bit as good as a native app with only 15 times the effort.

[nerd]

Yea, I read all the crap the naysayers were saying but then found some apps that you couldn't tell the difference what they coded in. I've seen some Cocoa apps that looked just as bad, hell the 2 I wrote for work are some.

RB it is, I'll probably start on the tutorials this weekend.

[alex_kac]

I'd go for RB, but anyone who diggs down C# just plain doesn't know it and is digging it down due to ignorance or "one week" of usage. Frankly, Visual Studio still blows XCode 3 out of the water, though XCode now finally feels like its really really decent. IB blows Visual Studio out of the water, but that's a different conversation.

As someone who spends many hours a day in C++ on Win32, has spent many hours on C# on Win32, and also spent many hours on Carbon dev and Cocoa dev recently, I can say that all the tools/languages feel shitty the first few weeks because you're learning them. I hated C# because I was used to C++ and I could do things 10x faster in C++ than in C# because it took me so long to figure things out.

As for the commenter above - you're not supposed to double click on the element to generate a listener method. That's for newbies! You're supposed to design your classes appropriately

[numero]

So I'm supposed to type out the listener method by hand??? No thanks.

I was comparing C# to RB. RB provides the listeners for you. Each listener is associated with its object. You can easily see which events your object can respond to. The ones you have used are in bold. The ones you haven't are grayed back. All nice and tidy.

-numero