Java vs other languages

[mgoarrow]

I'm a Java newbie, but experienced in Visual Basic, and was wondering how Java compares to other programming languages. Is it a suitable language to develop desktop applications in and does it have a visual GUI like Delphi, VB, and C++??? Are different compilers necessary to compile source code into .exe's for different platforms, e.g. Linux, Mac, windows, etc.?

Thanks for your help!

[billrogers]

Is it a suitable language to develop desktop applications in

This is a hugely debateable question and will probably continue to do so, java right now is able to be used for desktop applications, but some run really slow, i.e. Java Forte (a java ide).

Java as all kinds of ide,ranging from forte, visual j++, jbuilder, visual cafe....

once java is in byte code, which is what the compiler turns it into, you are good to go on any platform, that is the greatness of the jvm.

[sweetsupra]

hey mgoarrow,
Java is almost platform independent language unlike most languages out there.
quote:
Is it a suitable language to develop desktop applications in and does it have a visual GUI like Delphi, VB, and C++???

Well you have to develop the GUI component. It is harder to develop the gui component in java as compared to VB, but java is more flexible with what you can do w/ the GUI...you could swings, awt, applets, or web based component(mostly html, but some xml).


quote:
Are different compilers necessary to compile source code into .exe's for different platforms, e.g. Linux, Mac, windows, etc.?
different compilers isn't necessary. If you compiled the source code on window's environment(which turns into a class file), you would copy the class file to whatever platform provided that there is a JVM(Java Virtual Machine) available for the platform. Most of the OS's have JVM that you can download from sun or a third-party vendor. If you wanted to compile a java file in a different machine(platform), you would need to download a respective jdk(java development kit, I think) for that machine.

Manoj

[TheGoldenShogun]

I have a question about that. I'm just learning about the JAR and the Java Runtime Environment (as you can see from a previous post) but there is something I'm unclear of. If I want to package up the Runtime Environment and deploy it with my program, will it work on Mac's and other systems. I notice that there are DLL files in the bin and lib directories of the runtime environment... do those work on Mac's aswell or do I need a seperate runtime environment for a mac (I'm not too sure about what extensions Mac runs, except that they don't run exe's). Thanks

[VirtuallyVB]

If a platform has a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), then a java application properly deployed will run there regardless of the platform (in theory). The JVM may be there from a prior installation but you should make your deployment tool account for the possibility of no JVM existing on that platform. This involves deploying the byte codes in a platform-independent manner so that the JVM handles the execution.

Once you speak of executables (exe's), then you have already targeted the platform you wish to deploy on. Another poster here mentioned some ways to convert your class files into executables (which, like I said, would be targeted for the specific OS).

Caveat: What the hell is a msvc*.dll doing in a jar file unless you've already targeted MS Windows? Well, there is a jre (Java Runtime Environment) for MS and Solaris. I don't know about other OS's, but the theory says that having a jvm allows your byte codes to run.