what is the equivalent to Visual Basic

[psycorpse]

does any one know if there is program that is equivalent to visual basic for the mac. I am new to mac. I would also be looking for os x applications.

Thanks.

[DSHwrd]

Try looking at REALbasic (www.realbasic.com). It is fairly similiar to Visual Basic. The language is almost the same, interface is pretty close, etc... I think you might like it.

Also look into Cocoa. Both make OS X applications. REALbasic can create OS 9/OS X/Windows applications. So it's a lot nicer if you have to do cross platform.

Well, good luck,
- Daniel

[ebow]

As for finding applications, check out these two sites:

http://www.versiontracker.com

http://www.macupdate.com

They include pretty much the same applications. VersionTracker has more extensive coverage, but the site is a bit slower (in my experience) and ad-intensive.

[mw]

Don't make the same mistake I did by using REALBasic. I used it to create a shareware application, and many people bought it. This is the only case on the planet where having people buy your software is a BAD thing. I had more technical support cases than I could count, and 95% of the bugs weren't even my fault, but the fault RB's POS (guess what that means ;) ) compiler.

Trust me: it will save you a lot of time, energy, and asprin if you don't use RB to write full-fledged applications. It is fine for small utilities or for people who need to learn hands-on how to program in and Object-Oriented style and have very little, or no programming experience. For anything other than that, it is a huge mistake to use.

On the Mac side, use Cocoa with Objective-C. It makes much faster, much smaller, and (of course) much more stable programs than any third-party language could make. Even if RB is cross-platform, it doesn't make it a good reason to spend $99 (for initial payment AND for EACH version upgrade, which is a complete ripoff). Cocoa simply rocks. And as someone coming from a BASIC background and moving into Cocoa (oh, about 8-9 months ago), I must say that I am much happier on the Cocoa side (if you didn't catch the drift while reading through my post :D ).

[Craig R. Arko]

mw: I deleted that other thread for you.

psycorpse: You may also want to give AppleScript Studio a try if you are new to Mac programming. You'll learn a few things about Project Builder and Interface Builder that will be useful if you decide to press on into Cocoa programming as well.

[NeXTLoop]

I would have to disagree with MW. REALbasic is what you make of it. There are a large number of commercial apps, including some heavyweights in their particular fields, that are written in RB.

A couple of things that RB has against it are...

1. It doesn't enforce good programming habits like other environments. While it is an Object-Oriented environment, it doesn't really check your hand when it comes to programming sloppy code.

2. RB can get somewhat expensive if you like keeping up with the latest versions. If you're on a tight budget, I would recommend only getting the .0 releases, rather than also getting the .5 releases. Most of the good features are in the .0 releases, whereas the .5 releases are usually much less important.


Now I'm not in any way saying that MW that the problems MW experienced were of his own making. On the contrary, it sounds like he knew what he was doing. However, in the last version or two, RB has eliminated many of the bugs that caused the kinds of problems that it sounds like he was experiencing. In fact, RB is more and more becoming a serious competitor to other, more recognized, development environments. As someone who has used it since version 2.1, I can tell you that its matured a great deal, and will only continue to with each release.