> -----Original Message-----
> From: Don Hyde [SMTP:DonH@AXONN.COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 6:11 PM
> To:   PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject:      Re: [EE] C++ vs. Visual Basic
>
> I'll add another vote for Borland.
>
> VB is so grossly bloated and needs so many dll's to distribute a program
> that I can't get the job done for all the gagging.
>
However, if the program has been written as a tool for your own use (which
the majority of  my programs are), then distribution isn't a worry.
As an example of how usefull VB is, I had a project involving a temperature
stabilised laser.  The PIC ran a PID temperature control loop, with a sample
rate of 50 ms.  Adjusting all the loop parameters to optimise control
response was a pain, even with a flash chip, so I stripped out all the
ADC/DAC control routines and hooked them up to the MSSP module running as an
I2C salve.  Then I wrote a VB front end with lots of sliders for controlling
loop parameters and text boxes to show relevant parameters and an I2C master
driver.  Adjusting the PID loop was a snap after that.  The VB program took
maybe a day to write, compared to the previous 3 days of playing with loop
gains but reprogarmming the PIC.  The 50 ms loop time was easily achieved
using the multimedia timers built into windows, and although the period was
sometimes a millisecond or two out it was more than good enough.

> VC++ had the steepest learning curve of any programming environment I've
> ever used (I've used 30 different assemblers and just about any high-level
> language you care to mention, though not Ada, which I understand might
> just
> give it a run for the  money).
>
Agreed, VC++ is definately not for the beginner.  It certainly made my brain
hurt when I first tried it many years back.

> On a new job, I needed to crank out a quick-and-dirty PC thing and
> somebody
> handed me a copy of C++ Builder.  I groaned "You're not going to make me
> learn yet another...", but it proved to be as easy to use as VB, and able
> to
> make decent standalone .exe's, so I shut up and have been using it ever
> since whenever I need to throw something together.
>
Unless things have changed since I last used C++ Builder you can either
staticaly link all the runtimes, producing a huge executable, *or* have to
distribute the run time DLL's with the executable.

> It really impresses customers when you discuss something on the phone and
> then email them a pretty-looking program the next day.
>
>

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.