Bipin,
I have been a developer for Informix (and Innovative Software) for 13 years, and working in C/C++ during that time. In addition to the tools I use at work, I also buy my own set for use at home (often multiple tools), so that I can gain experience that I otherwise not get, and do a lot of reading to keep up. For example, I have been developing a fairly complicated game, and that allows me to learn/experiment with a lot of issues that I would not normally do at work (I tend to do work in deep core areas).
In my case I owned Borland C/C++ from Turbo C 2.0 through all versions of C++ up to version 4.0. Unfortunately, 4.0 simply was poorly implemented for handling moderate complex C++ classes under Windows 3.1. I was getting compile times of single digit lines per second on a 486/33. Furthermore, the debugger no longer could handle the project, and crashed too often (the debugger would crash, not from any bug of mine). I had to drop the whole project until I found out about VC++ version 2.x on NT, which was much better (and far more productive) than Borland. I believe that I even upgraded to version 4.5 Borland, but never installed it because I did not see competitive features.
Personally, I do not like Microsoft as a tool vendor, and I have to hold my nose at times, but the tools do work for me. Further, once I make a change, it becomes very hard to change back. That is why I made the comment about incremental changes. There is a very significant cost in changing. What does it really offer?
I do not work in RAD development. If I were, I would have looked at Delphi more. Then a Delphi interface might be attractive on my C++ workbench. But I do not. MFC support is not going to be anything to make me go back. So what is really offered? Where is the difference in development time going to come from? What aspect of development is aided more?
BTW, I am apparently ignorant of C++Builder, because I thought that its two most important features were its Delphi interface and MFC support. What else is really there? |
