🚀 go-pugleaf

This message belongs in the 'advocacy' category, so if you're looking
for messages that don't express an opinion about one development system
being better than another, stop reading right now.

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I have been programming a long time (in C) on systems like Unix and
MS-DOS, but I don't earn my income doing it.  Until now, I have resisted
learning to write Windows programs for quite a few reasons.  But now I
find that I have been asked to do something that involves writing some
Windows programs (namely console programs exec'd as CGI apps by a web
server) and I told the people I'd "check into it," meaning that if the
time to get the system configured and working were long, forget it.

I looked into the freely obtainable tools off the Internet for making
Win apps from C programs.  One system was installed to the letter of its
instructions.  It seemed to build a runnable console .exe with just some
printf() statements sending out an HTML page.  But then I gave it the
program I wanted to run, and that was the end of the easy times.  It
came with its own debugger, and one could see processor exceptions being
generated even before main() was called.  Of course, I don't think it
ever claimed to be bug-free (at the price, it's hard to complain,
right?), but the point is to get something working.

I downloaded another popular freely obtainable system, and after a bit
of time, also got the one simple program with the printf() statements to
run, but the real program didn't run at all.  Learning gdb requires an
investment of time, just to piece through the online help, and so I
figured trying the next system.

The next system was given by a friend who has an unlicensed (yes,
pirate) version of Borland C++ Builder.  He told me I would be very
unproductive/inefficient as a programmer trying to learn and configure
and mess with the freely obtainable tools I was using...namely that one
gets what one (is supposed to) pay(s) for, such as a commercial
development system like the popular ones.  So the C++ Builder was set
up, and within 30 minutes of running through the online help and figure
out how to build a console app, I had tested the simple cgi program with
the printf() statements and the real app I wanted to run.

And guess what, both apps worked.  The web server didn't even groan.  I
was beginning to think there was something wrong with my code in the
real application.  But then when the one ran built by the Borland system
, I figured the fault wasn't the programmer's.  At any rate, I had
tested the program on DOS (the only thing it can't do is IPC with the
webserver, so stdin and stdout were dealt with differently) and it
worked as well.

Now this probably, for some of you, belongs in the as-if-that's-news set
of statements, but I figure I lost an incredible amount of time trying
to configure and get things running (which they never did) with these
"free" tools for making Win32 programs.  I am now a firm believer that
if you want to get something done and are wondering about the trade-off
between time spent getting tools off the Internet for free vs. the time
and money spent for tools from the commerical suppliers of devel.
systems, pay the license fees ($800 in the US, I believe for the Borland
system I was using), even if you're just a hobbyist.  The amount you
save in frustration and exasperation is worth it.


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