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As I'm finishing up my first larger app (about 4K lines of code, and yes, I've seen that many of you write much bigger apps), I've wondered what programming tools I didn't use, that would have made working with PowerBASIC a lot easier.
I spent almost a day looking around and here's the general categories of tools that seem to keep popping up.
Despite the availability of these tools, pretty much all that I've used is the PB IDE, PB Help, and zillions of searches in the forums. And MSDN has been like a second home to me. Before using PowerBASIC I rarely visited MSDN. Now, I visit it throughout the day.
In hindsight, I'm not sure that any of the tools on the list would have had much of an impact on my productivity, with the exception of a more powerful IDE.
I've found that the single most important tool is the IDE. That's where I work most of the time and it's abilities/inabilities to save me time and effort far outweigh the potential benefits of any other tool I've seen. PBEdit has worked well enough, although like many other users there's a list of productivity changes I'd sorely like to see.
After the fact, PBCodec has been useful to find unused residual procedures/variables - but it wouldn't have been much help along the way. Also, I could probably have gotten better use of resource files, but I'll need more experience in creating/accessing the files.
I'd have use my code librarian much more, except that it's still somewhat empty of PowerBASIC stuff. However, I found that I've often modified my VB snippets foruse in my PowerBASIC apps. The code librarian I use is available at http://www.garybeene.com/free/gbcodelib.htm
Graphics libraries are the one area where I'd like to use available tools much more intensively, but since I mostly release freeware, the cost of such tools are hard to swallow.
In my apps, I try to stick with text databases so I can always recover manually if need be. That makes my need for database tools very minimal, but I'd expect a lot of programmers to need tools for working with industry-standard binary formats.
And finally, my apps usually need some Internet capabilities (smpt/pop3/ftp/http), but they're fairly standard stuff and while I've not worked with these features much so far in PowerBASIC, I expect to meet my needs with just a few custom procedures.
So, I'm interested in what tools any of you use extensively - that make a big difference in your productivity. My list seems awfully short.
I spent almost a day looking around and here's the general categories of tools that seem to keep popping up.
Despite the availability of these tools, pretty much all that I've used is the PB IDE, PB Help, and zillions of searches in the forums. And MSDN has been like a second home to me. Before using PowerBASIC I rarely visited MSDN. Now, I visit it throughout the day.
In hindsight, I'm not sure that any of the tools on the list would have had much of an impact on my productivity, with the exception of a more powerful IDE.
I've found that the single most important tool is the IDE. That's where I work most of the time and it's abilities/inabilities to save me time and effort far outweigh the potential benefits of any other tool I've seen. PBEdit has worked well enough, although like many other users there's a list of productivity changes I'd sorely like to see.
HexEditor/HexViewer
IDE/Code Editor
Grid Control
WinSpy
Dependency/DLL analyzers
Resource Editor
Code Formatter
Code Analysis/Cross-Reference/Profilers
PrintPreview
Databases
Graphics Libraries
SMTP/FTP/Browser Controls
Installers
Code Librarians
IDE/Code Editor
Grid Control
WinSpy
Dependency/DLL analyzers
Resource Editor
Code Formatter
Code Analysis/Cross-Reference/Profilers
PrintPreview
Databases
Graphics Libraries
SMTP/FTP/Browser Controls
Installers
Code Librarians
I'd have use my code librarian much more, except that it's still somewhat empty of PowerBASIC stuff. However, I found that I've often modified my VB snippets foruse in my PowerBASIC apps. The code librarian I use is available at http://www.garybeene.com/free/gbcodelib.htm
Graphics libraries are the one area where I'd like to use available tools much more intensively, but since I mostly release freeware, the cost of such tools are hard to swallow.
In my apps, I try to stick with text databases so I can always recover manually if need be. That makes my need for database tools very minimal, but I'd expect a lot of programmers to need tools for working with industry-standard binary formats.
And finally, my apps usually need some Internet capabilities (smpt/pop3/ftp/http), but they're fairly standard stuff and while I've not worked with these features much so far in PowerBASIC, I expect to meet my needs with just a few custom procedures.
So, I'm interested in what tools any of you use extensively - that make a big difference in your productivity. My list seems awfully short.
Seems like it would take a whole dang corporation to throw something like that together.
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