Some Commercial Programming Advice

[thomasaaron]

I would like to write an application that could be commercially distributed for use on both Linux and Windows machines.

I thought I had it all figured out (creating the .exe file for Windows with py2exe and creating an installer with Inno Setup), that is, until I learned that py2exe forks the MSVCR71.dll from Python, making commercial distribution of programs frozen with py2exe illegal (at least as far as I can understand). And paying some sort of licensing fee to Microsoft is not something I can afford or am interested in.

I know I could have end users download Python and then sell them my application. But I've got doubts about how well that would go over with Windows users. I'm not concerned about distributing to Linux users, as they will have no problem downloading Python (if they don't already have it).

My questions are:

1. Does anybody know if anything has changed with the legality of re-distributing MSVCR71.dll.

2. Is there another cross-platform language that meets the following requirements:

The source and necessary libraries can be converted to a .exe file
Is capable of using either Tk or GTK for GUI's
Can be packaged with for distribution and installation with Inno Settup
Doesn't infringe on the proprietary sensibilities of M$


Does Ruby fit these qualifications?

Note: I really don't want to use C/C++, as it would drag out the development in ways that I do not have the time/skill for.

[kknd]

There is. A functional language called Haskell.

Has a excelent gtk+ binding, and can be compiled into a binary executable, that doesnt need a virtual machine to run, and is portable. You will only neeed the GTK+ preinstaled.

But there is no need for it. You can still sell your product showing the source code.

[Smygis]

Perhaps D is for you, I dont realy know a lot about the language and its realy freash. I looked a bit on some code and it looks nice.

www.digitalmars.com/d/

Perhaps pyinstaller is what you want.
http://pyinstaller.hpcf.upr.edu/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

[nitro_n2o]

Lot's of people nowadays use Java for commercial application programming... clean and easy to use, it might not be really the best for linux

[thomasaaron]

There is. A functional language called Haskell. Has a excelent gtk+ binding, and can be compiled into a binary executable, that doesnt need a virtual machine to run, and is portable. You will only neeed the GTK+ preinstaled.

That's interesting. I was looking at a book on Haskell at the book store last night.
I'll do some more research on that. Does it have good libraries and the ability to interface with SQL databases?


Perhaps pyinstaller is what you want.
http://pyinstaller.hpcf.upr.edu/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

That had me pretty excited, but then I found this.
http://pyinstaller.hpcf.upr.edu/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/roadmap
It looks like they are working on it, though.



Lot's of people nowadays use Java for commercial application programming... clean and easy to use, it might not be really the best for linux.

Now, will Java work for stand-alone applications that are not dependent on the Internet. In other words, I want people to be able to fire it up from their applications/programs.

[nitro_n2o]

Now, will Java work for stand-alone applications that are not dependent on the Internet. In other words, I want people to be able to fire it up from their applications/programs.

Yes, as long as they have the JRE installed on their systems. In windows you can convert Java programmers to exe using some commercial tools...
http://www.google.com/search?q=java+to+exe&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[nitro_n2o]

There is. A functional language called Haskell.

Has a excelent gtk+ binding, and can be compiled into a binary executable, that doesnt need a virtual machine to run, and is portable. You will only neeed the GTK+ preinstaled.

But there is no need for it. You can still sell your product showing the source code.

But!! Functional programming is PAIN isn't it :(

[pmasiar]

Lot's of people nowadays use Java for commercial application programming... clean and easy to use, it might not be really the best for linux

Not exactly. Lot of *enterprises* use Java as main language, if they need to coordinate hundreds of programmers in complex projects.

But for small projects java is overkill. And for startups too. Just guess that language used YouTube? Hint: *not* java. :-)

[kknd]

Does it have good libraries and the ability to interface with SQL databases?

There is some libs that deal with databases, but Haskell dont have 1 % of the libraries that Java/C++ has.



But!! Functional programming is PAIN isn't it



No, its hard to do the usual things that are done easily in Java, but there is a lot of things that you can do much better (can you imagine a quicksort with two lines?).

There is a game (freetennis) written in a functional language (OCalm).

[Jessehk]

Have you considered Ocaml? It has a lot of the benefits of Haskell but it has a much less steep learning curve (side effects are allowed).

It emphasizes speed (it's about as fast as C), and safety (at has a very strong type system). It has a variety of development tools, and it's open source.

Take a look. :)

[pmasiar]

There is some libs that deal with databases, but Haskell dont have 1 % of the libraries that Java/C++ has.

Get mainstream dynamically typed language - get Python. You have flexibility of functional programming and access to vast pool of libraries.

And yes, Python is multi-paradigm language, you can use many tricks of functional programming, like lambda, generator expressions, *very* flexible list processing, dynamic changes of classes ("monkey-patching") etc. And as bonus you have less braces/parenthes to count. :-)

> can you imagine a quicksort with two lines?).

Yes. It should be one line: standard library call :-)

[kknd]

Get mainstream dynamically typed language - get Python. You have flexibility of functional programming and access to vast pool of libraries.

...


Yes, I know the functional things borrowed from the functional world =), but Haskell is a pure functional language.

And GHC (main compiler for Haskell) compiles into C-- (C, but using a very short list of keywords), and is 30x faster than Python, and dont depend on any virtual machine.

I like Python too, and I am not telling that Haskell is better, because its two very different languages, with different proposes.