GUI Object oriented languages

In programming today, there are several tools available to facilitate many programming endeavors. The tools that will most benefit the programmer will be dependent on the programmer’s objective. Since there are an abundance of potential programming objectives out there today, let us focus on something simple, more specifically, a simple game. In addition, since there are so many programming languages / tools available today, we will limit our selection to one of the following programming languages:

BlueJ

Visual Basic

# Matisse in Netbeans

# JFormDesigner

# BuoyBuilder

# Visual Editor for Eclipse.

# SwiXML

# JAXX

If I were creating a simple game with a GUI (Graphical User Interface), I would have lean towards using an Integrated Development Environments (IDE) because I feel they make object-oriented programming faster, easier, and more efficient. From the IDEs above, I would definitely utilize Visual Basic because the programming language facilitates the creation of simple GUI applications and the more complicated applications. Another important factor is that Visual Basic developers devised the programming language to make programming easier for advanced programmers, but also enables new programmers to easily comprehend and utilize the language. Furthermore, Visual Basic allows the programmer to visually assemble controls on a form and since the attributes and actions for these controls are pre-defined, a programmer can develop an easy application without the programmer needing to write a lot of code. 

Programmers can also utilize Visual Basic to create executable files, ActiveX controls, or DLL files; but in most cases, programmers utilize Visual Basic to develop Windows applications and to interface database systems. Additionally, in Visual basic, programmers can utilize dialog boxes with limited functionality to supply pop-up capabilities and programmers can insert additional logic within the appropriate event handlers, while controls provide the basic functionality of the application. To put this into perspective, imagine a drop-down combination box that will automatically display a list and permit the user to select an item from the list. The event handler would then be called to execute additional code when an item is selected; which would execute an action based on the item that was selected, such as populating a related list. 

Another plus for me is the fact that programming in Visual Basic is the same as programming in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). This is a plus because I have not written any programs in Visual Basic but I have written some small enhancements in certain office applications utilizing VBA. Based on this alone, I am pretty much sold on Visual Basic. One of the disadvantages of Visual Basic is that “all versions of the Visual Basic development environment from 1.0 to 6.0 have been retired and are now unsupported by Microsoft”. In addition, Microsoft does not support the related runtime environments. As of now, Microsoft only supports the Visual Basic 6 core runtime environment, and will continue to support it for Windows 7. I am happy to say that I am a Windows 7 holder, so I would still choose Visual Basic over the other programming languages.