What do you think of WinDev?

Question

I have a job opportunity. They use WinDev. I did some research about it and, although it seams pretty prometting, the website claims that it's used by only 100,000 developpers.

Have you worked with this language? What's your thoughts?

Answer 1

100K devs users is not that bad for a commercial tool. I whish I had that many customers. And they have a tradition of picturing nice girls on their boxes ;-)

Answer 2

Tools that promise "develop 10 times faster" and 4GL always makes me suspicious. (Seen it, done that).

In development 80% of the code is always done in 20% of the time, this is the part that is optimized easily using case tools and 4GL.

Its the remaining part that counts, and it has always come down to coding the rules by hand. And no mather the language, every single rule has to be expressed in some abstract way. And the developer has to find a way to fit the rule expressed by some customer in some coding logic. If this takes 4 or 1000 keystrokes does not mather, its the analysis/thinking that takes time.

Answer 3

I've been programming in Windev for 3 years and I think its a great product.

Can I develop 10X's faster ... no, for me ... 6-7 x's faster (I'm also a C++,C# programmer).

It has a fantastic IDE ... the native language is WLanguage but (you can program procedurally or oop), you can also program soley in AS400, SQL, and a slew of other languages.

It's extremely popular in Europe and gaining momemtum here in the states and Canada.

I rate the program (overall) A+. The entire environment is nothing like I've seen. It has also has a neat time management option that will keep you on-top of project time lines.

GvS ... i would take a look at it.

Answer 4

Tools that promise "develop 10 times faster" and 4GL always makes me suspicious. (Seen it, done that).

Aha, but WinDev uses "W-Language", which is a Fifth Generation language, so your concerns are unfounded!! It happens to look exactly like a bad ripoff of VB6, so you'll get to use the awesome power and good design that VB6 brought to the world. Their dialogs in the IDE all have a picture of a beach behind them, and their database is called Hyper-File. How much more awesome can you fit into one software package! ZOMG!

In all seriousness, I haven't used WinDev, but I have used another "custom-proprietary vb-based scripting-language" in the form of InstallShield and InstallScript, and let me tell you, it was Rubbish. I'd be incredibly sceptical of using something like WinDev simply because everything else I've seen that looked similar to WinDev was rubbish, and WinDev looks a lot like the rest of those.

I'd be very interested to hear a reasonable overview of it from someone who has experience using both WinDev, and other things such as C#/C++ or Java, and could explain all the pros and cons of it versus those other languages and platforms.

Answer 5

They appear to have a free express edition, so it probably couldn't hurt to download it and try it out.

Answer 6

The firm behind windev has nasty marketing and legal habits: the article on wikipedia ( in french ) was suspiciously edited ( notably about that "fifth generation" nonsense ), bloggers are being sued, and moreover, they communicate via blogs, articles and comments from allegedly genuine users. Guess who's that TracerBullet guy, developing "only 6-7 times faster" with a reputation score of 1 ? ...

However, real testimonials seem to indicate it was not that bad until some version ( 5 or 7, I don't remember ). There are still faithful, nostalgic users, I guess like Delphi fanboys. As for the market as a programmer, I guess there are maintenance jobs to take here and there ; but as far I've seen, the only reason to use it on a new project, for instance instead of VB.NET, is that the whole language ... is in french (!).

Answer 7

We use WinDev and WebDev a lot. If you like to just drag 'n drop application without much customisation, these are nice. And with a background in procedural languages it's not hard to learn. I believe most people came from Clarion and Cobol etc. There is a small dutch usergroup that meets once a month. I've seen some things these people are building and it's pretty nice.

Personaly, I don't like working with them. I don't like being limited in what I want to do, I just want to inherit classes and extend everthing. For example, a table on ajax driven website is only a few clicks, but if you want it to behave slightly different, it may take you days to come to the conclusion you just can't do what you want.

Anothor major disadvantage is the community. It's so small you have to figure out everything on you own. There is a french newsgroup I believe, but it's in french.

The tool and the language are in both french and english. Although it takes a while for PCSoft to translate the whole thing into english, which means that if you like to work with the latest software, you have to work in french.

Answer 8

this is the first time i've heared about this language <<<< can anyone provide us further information about it

Answer 9

I started using windev 6 months ago. 10 times FASTER ?? I cannot say, but over all its a cool program. In Holland we have had a so called rad race. Programmers had to develop a custom programm in rad time. in 2008 a group of windev users participated and they did not do to bad. They did not win but they seemed to be able to finish the task at hand

radrace url

In windev there are lots of tools and wizards. with these tools you can do a lot but if you want things different, then standard, you might have a problem. As I started using windev I soon understood that one should not use the wizards. everything the wizards do can be done by hand with the w language. Then, if you want things to be slightly different you can do so. It´s a pretty powerful thing, the w language.

As you do things by hand than the 10 times faster development is not realistic. But the w language has a lot of nice short commands that make development a lot faster. I would say 3 to 4 times faster. (Compared to visual basic )

The w language , being 5th generation, might have shortcomings. If for a particular thing the w language is not powerful enough, one can always use c#, or vb and use it as a dll in windev. Windev is completely open to the use of external languages.

One can use the hyperfile database to make client server programs, but if the number of users is to big one can always use sql server instead. The nice thing of the hypertext is that it is free. The one thing you have to buy is windev no need for an uml tool, no need for a report generator or nice controls. Even automatic help generation is available ( versus vb.net and visual studio one has to buy nice third party controls like those from Infragistic )

I have made several programs now and I like it. I have not seen shortcomings in the w language. The problem is documentation. Their is a very basic tutorial and their are examples available but that´s it. For the French speaking users pc/soft makes a magazine with tips and tricks in French I believe books are available as well.

A lot is possible, OOP is possible ( windev can even generate classes from the uml. and reverse engineer uml form classes. This process is a very cool feature. ). I believe that large piece of the new version (version 14) are made with windev it self. But you have to figure it out your self. That is the big issue.

If pc soft wants the English user number to increase then they have to do something about the way they promote the software. A book about the the w language should be nice , for starters.

over all, It's a nice one of a kind feature packed toolkit. I get the job done in less time. Working with it just feels good. I like the women in pc tool uses in the promotion papers as well??

PS: However if you download the trial software there is an issue. You can only make very little programs with it.

Answer 10

The answer to the question how productive WinDev is, is probably: "It depends". If the application is mostly about CRUD operations, views and detail screens; reporting and charting, then I think WinDev can be a big help.

I have developed in Java, and before that in Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes is a bit comparable to WinDev in that it has a lot of build-in functionality that gets you going fast. But if you try to do things it is not strong in, you won't get any help but only resistance from the tool.

There are types of applications I would definitely not develop in WinDev, but in Java. But this goes the other way around as well.

I do think WinDev is one of the few tools that survived the RAD period and kept up with new technology and IDE developments. But that's not for the actual RAD part of it that can generate code: I don't use that. It will never output the application you want. But the W-language itself is very powerful combined with some of the point & click functionality. It does take only two lines of code to store all fields on a form in a record in the database. A W-language function most of the times does what would take 10 lines of code in Java or more. But when there is no function for something in W-language, that you might have a problem.

WinDev did evolve: it can easily produce and consume webservices and xml; it can access SAP, Lotus Notes, Outlook, SalesForce, almost all Google applications, and more. Out of the box with just a few lines of code. It does support OOP, although that part could be better.

I do think there is a bit of a learning curve. Because all power is behind those W-language functions there are a lot of them. Also a lot of functionality is configurable, so there are a lot of options. A lot of functions and a lot of options. And the help is not that good. So there is a lot there, but you do have to find it.

So it does really depends on the type of application. I am developing an application in WinDev at the moment and carefully considered if I would be using WinDev or Java. For my type of app WinDev will do the job much faster compared to Java.

The fact that it is French is a bit of an issue. Because the English version is always late. And probably it is also the reason why WinDev is not a lot bigger. Would it have been an American company it would by no doubt be much more used. It is very popular in France but not outside of France. And there is of course nothing in the tool that makes it particularly useful for French developers. So it must be the marketing that is just not internationally oriented enough. Which is a shame for such a great tool.

Answer 11

As a PowerBuilder Developer, I am used to getting things done quickly. I am using the trial versions of WinDev and WinDev Mobile and I like what I see.