Choosing a programming language

Currently - after a very long period I am again into the programming language decision which I was not expecting.

Changing programming language is a big deal and you shouldn't do that every 2 years. When you search the web you will find recommendations to learn many languages and learn a new each 2 or 3 years. I find this totally silly. To get really productive with a programming language, takes at least a year and of course you would like to get the most out of it regarding ROI (return on investment).

When I did evaluate programming languages the last time, it was a 3-step way:

1. Collecting all options with the result of a hand full remaining for further analysis.
2. Keep an eye on activity and evolution of the results from step 1.
3. Detailed analysis of the remaining options and choose.

The time from beginning of step 1 until end of step 3 took about 2 years. During step 1 I already decided on a few parameters, which in my case were:

• I prefer static typed languages over dynamic ones for several reasons (e.g. less error prone, YMMV).
• I don't want to code user interface - I have coded GUI since I was an 8 year old boy and I was about 14 when I got GUI designers (those times still using MS DOS) so hand-coding GUI is for me like returning to stone-age and so that is a no-go for me if a GUI designer is missing.
• I don't like language hopping and because of the very dynamic requirements of my software projects I need a programming language that can be used for quite all realms - so all the domain-specific languages are excluded for my needs.
• My applications are usually plugin/addon enabled which means that a customer must be able to develop those for special needs on his own - without additional costs. That means, my favor goes to languages that are free (and open source) including the IDE used for development.
• The language should not be tight to a particular operating system.

My decision - taken back in 2008 after many years of classic Visual Basic development on Windows was: Java together with NetBeans IDE, using Swing GUI for desktop applications (NetBeans itself uses Swing - however, there is another option for building GUI in Java: SWT). A short comparison Swing vs SWT can be found here. Back in those days I have already blogged about my decision, you might want to read back to "The programming language" and "The IDE and the libraries" maybe. The Swing GUI is - by the way - far superior to the .net WinForms or WPF - both do not adapt well to very different text lengths in labels (just to give one example - in Swing this works without additional work in full automatic). Another core advantage of Java in general is: You take the binary and it runs everywhere! - C++ and many other languages at least require the same code to be compiled on each platform. What if I want to develop for the Mac and I don't own one? - I have given Java apps that I have written to a friend for testing on his Mac and it worked - without me ever testing it on the Mac. Of course if you call system programs dealing with the output you may see differences in the behaviour on different operating systems that you have to deal with. The most annoying thing in Java is that you need to ensure that the Java runtime is installed on all the client PCs where you want to use the app. Of course no difference to Microsoft's .net here - although there is less version quirks than for .net...

Now, about 4 years later there is nothing wrong with my decision. My decision is still that. With the rising of alternative operating systems the importance of Java has gained (on the server side Windows definitely already lost for enterprise applications at least) and many server-applications go Java to be platform agnostic. Apart from that the Java world is huge. Microsoft's .net is growing also, but still far from that (regarding size and quality of libraries and community).

The trigger for my latest search for a programming language is that I have a few very small programs (running on the client) to write (they are not "real" applications, just tiny programs for particular small needs). I found Java - and .net or Mono as well just too big for such tiny stuff. In my particular case they are Windows specific needs. A few of those needs I already solved by just writing VBScripts. That was ok for the GUI less needs. Now I have a few little needs for small GUIs. And that again brought me to a brief look around.

And indeed that is the single parameter ("should fit for very tiny requirements also") I did not include in my former decision back in 2008. And good it was I think because finding the programming language that fits for really everything 100% is not realistic. It is even not realistic to think that a programmer nowadays can survive just knowing one language - but: It is important to keep in mind that no one can achieve the same level of expertise in all used languages.

So this post can be seen as an addition to my main pro-Java decision - the programming languages that are helpful in addition to Java.

For Windows development you should know VBScript and on Linux shell scripting or Python or Perl for the small scripting stuff.

But what to choose, if a little GUI is needed?

If you search for a platform independent development platform, you could look at Free Pascal and Lazarus IDE as it creates native code (so just take the executable and run it instead of writing packages or setups that manage plenty of dependencies) and is fast. There is one problem with this approach: On Windows (in my case) using COM components (not to talk about .net) is not well supported and possible only with quirks (not tried myself, I just read about that). That is the reason why this is not an option for me in my current situation. If your application does not need to tightly integrate into the Windows ecosystem Free Pascal gives you multi-platform development (same code, just need to be compiled for/on each platform).

After all, still core technology is C(++) and Code::Blocks is an IDE available for all major platforms (for wxWidgets projects the wxSmith seems to be the most capable GUI builder, you need separately install wxWidgets - at least on Windows). Or anyway you can either use NetBeans using external designers to build the GUI for Linux development. I have developed quite a lot C++, but maaany years ago and today I simply had problems getting Code::Blocks to work seamlessly with wxwidgets (design worked, but compilation finished with configuration errors). What I found on the net related to my errors was from about 2008 partly not matching my environment. I gave up on this but for those succeeding I want to mention this option.

Last but not least I still also see the option to use SharpDevelop with .net for the single reason of time-to-get-started and seemless integration into the Windows ecosystem - and this combination by the way is the only mentioned one that is bound to windows only. If you think of Mono and MonoDevelop then be warned about the differences! Creating platform independent applications with C# is not as seamless as you might think! Using  MonoDevelop on Windows (MonoDevelop can compile against .net or Mono) brings more platform independence but you loose the Windows integration (COM/activex support at minimum level - I find the Java-COM-interop even better; registry access and stuff like that). The very important point here is the Windows integration - it's the one and core argument for this option!

I was about to write a paragraph on speed but didn't want to write that without a single test after more than 3 years of not checking that. Surprisingly a minimum GUI test lead to the following result: Cold start on a virtual Windows 2008r2 machine is 5 seconds for both - .net as well as java. A second start is 1-2 seconds - either for both. I then tried a Java test application with a little more GUI to find out that (warm) start is 4 seconds - not bad either. Surprisingly Java 1.6 update 30 and .net runtime 4.0 seem to bring a similar user experience at least from startup behaviour. Many still say, Java is slow - far missed!

But I may not forget that I need to access activeX/COM components for my small work which makes it more feasible doing it with .net because .net simply integrates better here - as already mentioned. Of course there are options when using java - for example - my favorite com4j (which I tried for several COM components in the past where it worked well). Although I never tried to embed activex controls into a swing component - and that does not seem trivial in Java - see here.

Needless to say that I would prefer Java for 100% of the work if it would be easier to deal with COM components and if it would integrate nicely with the Windows stuff. Java with NetBeans is basically the only combination that I really love to develop with. Everything else lacks in IDE features, is difficult to set up or the community is small and tiny amount of available components.

And of course there is my general tendency to avoid Microsoft technologies whereever I encounter them. The classic Visual Basic was one of the longest continued stuff of Microsoft, even although there were signifficant changes between VB 3.0 and VB 4.0 (with switch to 32 bit). When I look at the last years there were unusable first attempts of .net with first Windows forms and then WPF (see a discussion here), Microsoft pushed a lot of newer GUI styles over the years with Ribbon interfaces or now the Metro GUI where you need to use a new GUI language and software companies continously need to adapt or rewrite parts of the application). Would I have used Java since the late ninetees I would have experienced a completely different continuity. Microsoft managed it very well, to drive developers .net without those getting aware that they are again caught in a one-way-street with a dead end. Just because industry follows Microsoft - at least on the client side - in most areas, I need to accept that I can't stay completely outside the windows specific (VBScript and .net) stuff. I will take care to keep it at a minimum. This means, that for my tiny programs I will most probably go with .net just because of the lack of other options.

For those who like dynamic languages, I want to mention Python. One of it's core advantages in my opinion is that it runs on many platforms but comes along with Windows extensions on Windows. This means: When you need to do Windows stuff you can continue to use Python - of course using the Windows stuff (COM and Windows API for example) means that (at least that part) of your program is then bound to Windows-only use. For platform agnostic programming there are bindings for wxWidgets for Python. However, the IDE's I tried were all poor in features or stability - I tried Eric, SPE and Idle back in 2008 - a short look tells me, that there is still a lack of GUI designers (e.g. Glade for Windows seems near to discontinued) - so I cannot really recommend a particular IDE - you can have a look yourself - here is a list of Python IDE's. Unfortunately deployment for Python programs on Windows is not as easy as for .net or Java.

To round up this post: For building setups for your Windows applications I can recommend the Innosetup application as a good mix of flexibility and ease-of-use. For creating Linux packages see official documentation for creating .deb packages (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, ...) and here for creating .rpm packages (redhat, Fedora, ...).

Related posts: The programming language, The IDE and the libraries, Install NetBeans on Ubuntu 10.04, Java vs .net/C#.