Hello,
Before I go ahead and invest time checking out RealBasic, I'd like some feedback from people who have moved on from VBCLassic and use the Windows version of RealBasic to write professional business applications.
Is the language good enough, are there enough third-party add-on's to solve the inevitable shortcomings, etc.?
Thank you.
I was never a big VB6 developer, but I have used VB.NET quite a bit. REALbasic is a great substitute for creating desktop applications, but there are some things it cannot do, such as create DLLs or COM objects.
The REALbasic language is significantly more robust than VB6: it's fully object-oriented, has introspection/reflection and even has some dynamic capabilities. The IDE is a lot nicer than the VB6 IDE. But VB6 is 10 years old now and REALbasic is updated regularly, so it ought to be better.
There is a weakness in the 3rd party control market. You won't find anything as good as the grid controls available to VB6, for example. Reporting has been a weak area until recently. REALbasic itself now includes reporting capabilities and there are several 3rd party reporting tools available.
I've created quite a few professional business apps for Windows using REALbasic, but I do all my development on Mac OS X and use VMware Fusion and REALbasic's remote debugger to test and debug on Windows XP/Vista/7.
REALbasic is free on linux. Install a dual boot system on your PC. Ubuntu would be a good bet here.
The answer to your question is YES. RB is Great for Desktop Apps. YES there are a bunch of third party add in, however, you don't really need them. You can do everything you want in RB. If you do want to benefit from 3rd Party products (why reinvent the wheel), there are plenty, and the support group is awesome.