Thinking of making the jump from scripts to applications 2

[PPettit]

With my needs and scripts becoming more and more complex, I'm thinking of switching to a language more suited for application development. These apps would be running on Windows XP/Server 2003 systems.

Most of what I want to do at this point involves interacting with Excel, Outlook, the Windows printing system, the Terminal Services environment, XML documents, and a few different types of databases (Access, MySQL, and Progress).

On the surface, Visual Basic .NET seems like the obvious choice. Even though it appears to be harder to transition to (from VBScript), would some "flavor" of C be a better choice? Anyone have any other suggestions for a novice like me?

 

[dilettante]

C is a low-level tool. Great for tasks that demand the time and effort required, probably ill-advised for anything else.

You description of "applications" is a bit vague though. VB.Net might be an alternative, but like the Java .Net is based on, it's really more a server-side tool for creating web applications. Of course it supports a form-oriented paradigm, and with the destruction of VB people do plink around creating VB.Net desktop applications too. It probably is the obvious path in the absence of real alternatives.

Some more marginal alternatives might include Delphi (very different from VB/VBScript), RealBASIC (maybe more VB-like than VB.Net), or NSBasic/Desktop (which is VBScript with a form-oriented host and a decent IDE). Of those I'd guess Delphi would be the more "professional" alternative, but the learning curve will be much steeper than VB.Net's would. You may as well look at C# then, though it has all the baggage of VB.Net plus the learning curve of Delphi (i.e. C# is also a very different language from VBScript).

Delphi also comes in ".Net flavor" these days as well as native code form.

If you're serious about the Office suite VBA may still be the way to go while it lasts. Support is beginning to dwindle away as Microsoft struggles to move Office "automaters" away from VBA toward .Net through the VSTO path.

 

[wcburton]

I would recommend taking a look at AutoIt (

http://www.autoitscript.com)

I have been using it quite a bit for some utilities at work. You use Koda to design forms (code gets pasted into the autoit script) and the scripts can be compiled to EXEs. Koda looks like the form designer from Delphi (back in version 3 anyway - haven't looked since then). SciTe comes with it as the editor. It has the language file included to do syntax highlighting and keyword auto complete.

They have a very active user base and forum area with help and sample code.

 

[EBGreen]

I would in no way want anyone to think that I think poorly of AutoIt. In fact quite the opposite is true it has allowed me to script things in the past that would be otherwise un-scriptable. Having said that, I would still suggest learning VB .Net (or even better in my opinion C#). I think that the capability of the .Net architecture is considerably larger than that of AutoIt. Perhaps more importantly in the current IT employment market, use whatever job search engine that you want and compare what you get when you search for VB.Net versus searching for AutoIt.

[red]"... isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway?! I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you are good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" - The Tick[/red]

 

[PPettit]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

I'm going to give VB.NET a try. It seems like the best overall fit for what I want to do.

EBGreen had a great idea that didn't even occur to me: see what people are asking for in the job market. It never hurts to make yourself more desirable to a future employer.