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Long winded title, short question:

If one wants to develop for Windows but not have to rely on any external dependency (no runtime, thus ruling out .net), what supported, alive and fully functioning* alternatives are there?

Visual Basic 6 is dead, Visual C++ is obvious and Delphi seems to be the prime choice for that, but I wonder if there are any other alternatives?

*as in: Being able to use all the Windows Features like putting an icon in the Notification Area, making the Taskbar Icon flash etc.

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  • Why should VB6 be considered dead? It still works. Commented Jan 8, 2009 at 6:42
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    It still does, but it is not supported anymore since April 2008 I believe - it could break anytime, and Microsoft may not care to fix it. Also, AFAIK you cannot buy it anymore outside of some funky subscription. Commented Jan 8, 2009 at 17:14

24 Answers 24

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8

Have a look at this -

http://www.codegear.com/products/delphi

Glynn

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1 Comment

Seems to be indeed the prime product for Win32 (apart from C/C++).
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D using D compiler

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C (lots of compilers available)

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2

eiffel using SmartEiffel*

(*note SmartEiffel interprets eiffel, and generates ANSI C code, which can be compiled with any standard C compiler. It also generates Java byte code.)

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1

Ada compiled with gnat

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1

C/C++ with Borland, if you don't want to be entirely beholden to MS.

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1

Mercury using the Mercury compiler (compiles to ANSI C, which can then be compiled to native code)

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1

Modula 2 using modula2 compiler

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1

Pascal with FreePascal compiler

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1

Vala (compiles to ANSI C)

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1

Haskell using GHC. Compiles via C or direct to native code requiring no special libraries.

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0

Have a look at this page:

http://dada.perl.it/shootout/

It's a port of the computer language shootout to compile on the Win32 platform. In the chart of languages used, he lists which ones compile to native code (the compiler is listed in bold italics). I did notice that he listed C# and Java as compiling to native code, but that of course is incorrect, so make sure you investigate.

I will list each language separately to allow for individual voting.

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Awk using awka*

(*note: awka interprets awk, and generates ANSI C, which can be compiled to native code with any C compiler).

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PowerBasic

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Forth using BigForth compiler

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Haskell using ghc

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Modula 3 using Critical Mass *

(*note: compiles to ANSI C, which can compile to native code using any standard C compiler)

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0

OCaml compiled with OCaml compiler

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0

Prolog using Visual Prolog

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Ubercode using UberCode compiler

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Goo using Goo compiler (generates ANSI C)

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REALbasic which gives you the extra benefit of being able to compile for Mac and Linux as well.

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I think you should give Qt a try. At least, download the file and run the samples, because it ships with a working example of the Notification area feature as you want.

http://qt-project.org/

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MASM32 ( http://masm32.com/ ) if you can live with the licensing agreement.

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