FIVE EASY PIECES

Powerful Development Tools

PC-based relational databases allowed the implementation of client/server applications, but the only tool people had generally available was C. Implementing graphical applications in C is extremely costly. It typically took a competent C programmer at least 6 months to learn to code graphical applications, and this didn’t include the time necessary to learn to build distributed, cooperative-processing client/server applications.

Within a year of the release of Microsoft Windows 3.0, several graphical development tools appeared:

  • ObjectView from Matesys was one of the earliest
  • PowerBuilder from PowerSoft was one of the most ambitious
  • Visual Basic from Microsoft was one of the most elegant
All of these tools were much easier to learn than C and the Windows API, and they allowed people to develop graphical applications quickly.

Today there are many GUI development tools to pick from, but PowerBuilder and Visual Basic are still the leading candidates.

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