Is there anything RAD comparable to VCL?

Question

After years in embedded programming, I have to develop a Windows app. I dug out my old C++ Builder and Delphi. These are great and the latest version costs over $1k, so I won't be going there.

What I particularly like is the VCL (visual component library) which let's me code my own components and share them with others, plus the thousands of existing 3rd party components. I noticed that there is now also a RAD PHP from Borland too.

I realize that MSVC, QT, NetBeans, etc are good enough IDEs for RAD, BUT does anything offer the ease of the Borland products for developing additional components - and does anything else have thousands to choose from?

PC based? Cross-platform is good. Browser based? Free is always good ;-)

I don't particularly care about the programming language.

Answer 1

The Visual Studio Express Editions are pretty good if you don't want to spend any money on an IDE. I started programming in C++ Builder and also liked the VCL a lot. I dabbled in Java a bit but found C# to be much closer to the C++ Builder/VCL experience.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/

You can always try these out and if you really like the environment the upgrades aren't too expensive to the full versions. I think the only major feature missing from express editions are plugins.

Answer 2

SHORT

.net, it's the closest you will get

Answer 3

Try Lazarus, Lazarus is a cross platform visual IDE for Pascal and Object Pascal developers. It is developed for and supported by the Free Pascal compiler. is available for several Linux distributions, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows (win32/64/CE) and Mac OS X (including IPhone/IPad). The language syntax has excellent compatibility with Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings, widestrings, interfaces).

for additional info check theses links

• free pascal
• Components and Code examples
• Lazarus Components

Answer 4

If you are interested in PHP, the next version 6.9 of the NetBeans IDE will include support for the Zend Framework. Milestone 1 of NetBeans 6.9 is already available here (24 MB size).

A blog entry with screenshots can be found here: Zend Framework support.

Answer 5

For the Java platform, Apache Click is a web based solution.

Highlights:

• Very easy to learn
• Component and Page Oriented design
• Event base programming model
• Stateless and stateful page support
• Exceptional performance
• Automatic form rendering and client/server side validation
• Supports Velocity, JSP or FreeMarker page rendering
• Supports Java 1.5 and up

Click examples are available online at http://www.avoka.com/click-examples/home.htm.

There are a number of extension projects that provides extra features and components.

Click applications can also run "in the cloud" on Google App Engine. This means you can develop and test them on a local app engine server and then deploy them to GAE which is free within the basic quota (up to several millions of requests per month).

Answer 6

If you want develop desktop apps, Delphi is a clear winner: Single executable, no runtimes, few dependencies in the case you have to deploy an app with database access, native code

As already said, Lazarus + FreePascal makes for the "free Delphi" role. I personally didn't have a good experience with it - but I heard that got better since I last tried it. (I'm talking of lazarus IDE, since FreePascal seems to be a very stable compiler and used by very serious Delphi projects for various purposes - like creating Win64 binaries, for example)

.NET, on the other side, offers some free solutions:

• On the multiplatform side, Mono + MonoDevelop

• On MS stack, the Visual Studio Express IDE.

All the choices allow you to visually create hierarchies of forms and change it in design time. Visual Form Inheritance, VFI for short, can save you a lot of time if done well.

Web things, the major players are Java (JSP and the like) and .NET (ASP.NET). Having done some webservice development in dotNet(1.1), I loved it for the simplicity. Seems Java boys have a lot more work to make things work (that was said from a Java enthusiast friend of mine) with SOAP Webservices.

Answer 7

There are quite a few options available. You can download the express versions of Visual Studio for free and they are quite good. Not as many features as the full paid versions but very close (however the C++ version DOES NOT support MFC/ATL only C++/Win32). This gives you great exposure to the .net framework if you wish to learn it.

I haven't used the free Delphi tools so I can't say what they're like.

You could also give Qt or WxWidgets a try as well. Both are great products but I think Qt is more mature and has a better component library. However both of them come with runtime components that have to be distributed with your app.

Answer 8

Eclipse is also a great IDE, and there's a good number of libraries which can integrate into it, so Eclipse + free 3rd party components >= VCL.