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Re: What would give a great push to Upp [message #19516 is a reply to message #6744]

Wed, 10 December 2008 13:48

cioannou
Messages: 45
Registered: January 2006
Location: Greece

Member

Accept my apologies for reviving an old topic.

Every now and then I am looking for cross-platform Powerbuilder alternatives for "Business Apps Development" and I always come across tools and/or languages that are more "generic" and "open".

Most of those tools are too "verbose" and too geeky for business applications like Accounting, Invoicing, Warehouse etc.

So I would like to express once more that there is a huge gap in this field, thus many people turn to .Net and other accompanying frameworks/controls that mostly offer good looks and ready made functionality that speeds up development time.
Many people couldn't care less how a 'TextBox' is implented, we just want to Get/Set text, font, size, style etc. in an easy and quick way. Same with Data forms or tables, noone cares how the 'update' is implemented behind the scenes, a simple object.update() is sufficient for the 99%.

Since U++ is greatly focusing on less time and code needed to implement a project, I feel like sharing a few thoughts.

Here is a short list of what the majority of people like me are looking for (in no particular order):

1) Good looking apps
2) Data Visualization controls for Quick and easy data handling in forms, grids, reports.
Things like, sort, filter, search, column moving, grouping, report design etc. etc.
3) Ability to use external libraries (like DLLs) for special stuff, e.g. encryption
4) re-usable forms, windows, controls
5) Exporting/Printing to various types Excel, PDF etc.
6) Auto resizing & docking of controls and windows.
7) Transactions support
Cool

SQL SQL SQL
9) Stored procedures support
10) Easy string, date, manipulation
11) Easy filesystem handling
12) Easy networking stuff (ftp, smtp, http) etc.
13) XML support
14) Auto complete
etc. etc.

I strongly believe that this would greatly improve U++ popularity even though it uses the scary for many C++.

It just seems to me that U++ is closer than anything I have seen until now to generic & still time effective philosophy, I feel that U++ has the potential to stand next to anything like .Net, Powerbuilder and the likes as long as it provides the "Widgets for Dummies" or "The tools for non-geeks" if you prefer.
Either we like it or not, many people out there are VS addicts and you just can't make them get rid of some of their habits.
For example, "double-click" a control and code an event.

And last but not least, all these don't have to be FREE, actually there are many GPLed projects out there that offer additional modules or functionality for a price.

I wish I had the words to convince people that the vast majority of all these hardcore guys who want to build the next "Firefox","Apache","Unreal Tournament","MySQL" or "Get your DIY satellite to orbit" already have billions of alternatives to use, business developers don't.

Please do not consider this a flame post or anything like it.

Thank you very much.

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