VC++ or Java to support serial port driver?

[dalewz]

Hi,

Could sb kindly answer my following questions:

Plan:
I am trying to find a language to build a GUI to communicate with our
device via serial port.

Questions:
1. which language (VC++ or Java) is the best?

2. if VC++, which complier (VC.net or BCB 6) is the best? I hope they
have a good serial port driver built in or I can find easily.

3. any good training courses or books for recommended solution?

Thank a lot. -Dale

 

[Jorge Rivera]

Given the scope of your question, I suggest you go to a
microsoft.public.* newsgroup and post your question. This is Off-topic
here.

Questions:
1. which language (VC++ or Java) is the best?

Depends... BTW, this is a C++ newsgroup, I think most of us will tell
you C++ is the best language for most applications because we happen to
like C++.

GUI toolkits are not part of the C++ standard.

BTW, VC++ is not a languagge. It is an IDE for C++ development in Windows.

2. if VC++, which complier (VC.net or BCB 6) is the best? I hope they
have a good serial port driver built in or I can find easily.

VC++ is the name of the compiler. I have no experience with Borland. I
think neither one of thems have driver development support. You need
DDK (Driver Development Kit) from Microsoft.

Out of the Visual Studio compilers, I personally prefer VS.NET 2003.

 

[Jeff Schwab]

Hi,

Could sb kindly answer my following questions:

Plan:
I am trying to find a language to build a GUI to communicate with our
device via serial port.

Um... No. A GUI is a Graphical User Interface. It interfaces with
Users. Graphically. Serial ports do not directly display graphics (at
least not any I've seen), and very few users stick their fingers in and
interface with the ports directly.

Here's what I think you want: An application communicating with users
through a graphical interface, and with some device via a serial port.
These are two, separate interfaces, and I recommend that you avoid
coupling them more than necessary. One popular approach is to use two,
complementary languages for this sort of application, and let them
communicate through widely platform-specific (but widely supported)
channels, e.g. bidirectional pipes. C is a popular choice for the
device-level code.

Questions:
1. which language (VC++ or Java) is the best?

VC++ isn't a language, it's Microsoft's implementation of a compiler and
IDE for the C++ programming language. You don't have to use VC++ to use
C++. In your position, my first choice probably would be to use a less
OS-specific C++ compiler, my second choice would be Java, and my third
choice would be a recent (not 6.0) version of VC++.

2. if VC++, which complier (VC.net or BCB 6) is the best? I hope they
have a good serial port driver built in or I can find easily.

Not a clue. Try a microsoft-specific news group.

3. any good training courses or books for recommended solution?

To which problem?

 

[dalewz]

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your reply. I heard that there are many 3rd party
applications to support serial port communications. I guess I just
need to find a good one.

I just post a new messege to ask if C# can run on any machine? If so,
C# would be a better tool for my application.

Best, -Dale

 

[Jerry Coffin]

(e-mail address removed) (dalewz) wrote in message
[ ... ]

I am trying to find a language to build a GUI to communicate with our
device via serial port.

Okay -- you should be aware, however, that nearly everything involved
with both GUI and serial port development is non-portable and won't be
possible using strictly standrad C++ (or probably Java either).

Questions:
1. which language (VC++ or Java) is the best?

That's really unanswerable. Given that you're posting in
comp.lang.c++, it's fair to guess that most people here use C++ fairly
regularly, probably in many cases because they like it, think highly
of it, etc. If you ask the same in a Java-oriented newsgroup, you're
likely to encounter people who like, use, think highly of, etc., Java.

In both cases, the answers as to which is better are fairly obvious,
predictable and (mostly) meaningless.

2. if VC++, which complier (VC.net or BCB 6) is the best? I hope they
have a good serial port driver built in or I can find easily.

VC++ is a compiler that implements (more or less) the C++ language.
BCB 6 is another copmiler that implements (again, more or less) the
C++ language. As far as the serial port driver goes, that's properly
the domain of the OS. You're apparently planning to program on
Windows, and Windows does have a serial port driver, much like most
others -- you open the serial port as a file, and read from it, write
to it, etc., somewhat like a file on a disk or anything else.

3. any good training courses or books for recommended solution?

That depends heavily on your past experience and exactly what you want
to learn -- if you want to learn the bare minimum to complete this
specific job you'll want to learn different things than if you really
want to learn to program, and this just happens to be one of the first
things you're going to do along the way.