Denaes

Well I think at the point where you have all of those features it's an IDE. Maybe there is a difference I don't know of, but I've always thought of something like notepad like a code editor and something that combines developer tools to be an IDE. Yeah, thats why I asked if anyone knew of one - my Google searches were fruitless. oh, you can use regions with any language. You just need to have tags to mark them and the IDE/Code Window has to be able to read the tags. Thats why you put commands into commented out lines - it'll still mark where a region starts/ends in any code editor window and in a "code region enabled" window it would fold your code. Any idea if any IDE/Text editors have an option for displaying what is in an Include file? I'd love to have an include line - then have what the included code is to be showin in the display as a region. But thats mainly because working with included files is the worst professional way for a team to work that I can think of and even more annoying when you have to check the includes out of SourceSafe to even see what is in them.

I'll take that as a no. No interest and no existing application that exsits like that that anyone would know. :)

I think Half-Life 1 (or one of those FPS games that I don't play) was ported over to .Net and released as open source. I'm not sure if it was just for fun or as an experiment for future projects.

I'm thinking this might make a good .Net 2.0 project. I'm programming a lot in Progress, which has it's own IDE... which is pretty awful. I'm looking for a basic IDE with the most basic features: find, replace, tabbed formatting (really being spaces), keyword highlighting, line numbers. Thats all basic stuff that I could find in many freeware or low priced-ware mini IDEs. Other things I'm looking for: Commentable IDE Code - basically every language has a way to comment a line. So you can put a comment line in and include a command for the IDE. Sort of similar to how you insert Javascript into HTML comments. so you could do this: '//RegionBegin: "Variables" <code within, presumably variables> '//RegionEnd: "Variables" Which won't throw any errors in any compiler since they're commented out lines - heck they'll still be helpful comments in the code as well. doing this I would like to add a few features that would help me in Progress & PHP: Code Regions and Include Regions (basically displays what is in another text file) I would want to be able to designate many things within a settings file for each language such as what opens/closes a Comment (VB it would be ' & the end of a line). It doesn't seem terribly hard. Maybe some sort of code completion from the list of keywords as an afterthought. Definately ways to help differentiate a loop/if...then statement in shading or something like that.

See if you can create it and possibly either sell it as an add-in component or make it a givaway. Another alternative is to work on such a product for #Develop, which is an open source .Net IDE. Maybe if you're successful enough MS will steal or buy your idea and incorporate it into the next Visual Studio much like many of the C# IDE changes :D

Just being able to code for the framework, ie intellisense picks up errors and code completes. Oh and you can target 2.0 for compilation. It should all just be settings pointing to different paths and a library for the code. We're not talking about VB's break'n'continue or C#'s refactoring tools which are part of the IDE, but just being able to use the framework.

At work they do a large project in Progress, which is a large Database application (comparable to Oracle and SQL Server) with a comprehensive programming language attached. They took me in as a VB6/VB.net programmer and for the last two days I've been learning Progress. Progress itself is very easy. The IDE could be nicer, but the language isn't hard at all. 2 days in and I'd say I could do 70% of a business application off the top of my head or looking up syntax. Progress also allows "Include" files and my new company uses them extensively. This is a bit of a problem. Progress uses Includes like PHP does, basically where the line of code is pointing to the file, on runtime the contents of that file are dumped onto the virtual page of source code. Now that doesn't sound bad, does it? Well you can nest Includes... one include might have 0 or more... I've seen up to 5 includes within an include. I looked at one of those includes and they also had an include more than one more include... You can see where this is going. Actually I could see a bunch of includes working rather well if they were documented properly... or at all. You see, when I mentioned documentation standards with the manager he kinda got nervious and mumbled something like "we have a basic block of information at the head of each file and then comments throughout the code" Now there is a header on everything. Sometimes it's filled out with the procedure name! :D For the most part, it's not. No programmer name, no updates, no description. I assume the date is automatically inserted because it's there on all the procedures. So within the code, there might be a line of description saying something inane like "Report formatting variables" then continuations to the gibberish. Coding standards of any sort arn't followed and you can't start following them because often standard declarations are within an Include file :D if you change the Include file, you'll break dozens to hundreds of procedures. So the variables are a combination of what is within the Includes and what the programmer chooses. Many names are equally inane like "v-bal, v-tot & g-tot". These three variables were all decimal values and three levels of totals for a report. g-tot is Grand Total. I have no clue what v in the other two stand for. These type of variable names are the norm, they make a little bit of sense if you know exactly what the subject is and what the thought process of the programmer was. Pretty easy for simple straight forward projects. When you're working on a report dealing with two different kinds of accounting and printing out matrixes to a form, then using MOD to determine if the printout will flow over to another page to the right - and printing out multiple of these matrices in a run - it's not straight forward in the least. I actually got excited when I saw a comment group in the middle of the (500 line) file, but it was just a block of code commented out and never deleted. I'm not quite sure *why* there is one array declared with a length of 20 in there... Happy happy fun. But it's my first real programming job where I'm on salary. I should be able to get some good experience out of this. And they were mentioning that they might have some VB.Net applications over the summer :D

Everything requires Runtimes of a sort. Assembler has runtimes built into the bios/CPU of the chipset you're programming against. Its for this reason that with similar chipsets you can default to more general code and make a file that will work on most PCs. If you start optimizing things it won't work on all PCs. C/C++ generally has the runtimes built into and distributed with windows. I'm not sure about Linux or OSX. VB6 requires runtimes, but they're already installed on most Windows (Post 98 I think) machines. .Net is in a similar boat with much larger runtimes. Everything past XPsp1 has the framework. Java isn't included in any OS's that I know of and like .Net a lot of people are against installing it, partially because of how intrusive it is and partially because it's Java (don't ask me). Flash is the easiest to install of the multi-OS programming languages and easiest to work with graphics. You can create executables for specific OSs like Mac and Windows and the 500k runtime files are easy to come by and most people have them. Just like with .Net & Java a vocal minority has a vandetta against it and loudly whines about hating it. The only way Flash has ever annoyed me is how it's used for banner ads (replacing animated GIFs) and when people misuse it to make redundant "intros" and animation/graphic/sound heavy web sites. I'd say Javascript would be your best bet as everyone has a web browser, though then you have to play "browser wars" as each displays and utilizes JavaScript differently. Then there is the vocal minority with a valid claim about turning Javascript off for security/privacy reasons. I'd say in order of accessability you have: C/C++, Flash, Javascript, VB6, Java, .Net Flash is pretty much program and forget, C/C++ and Javascript you have to really code to your user(s)

Anything potentially dangerous is blocked by Google. They block the VB.Net/C# files, .chm (!?) and .zip (not sure about .rar). All are listed as potentially harmful. I'm not sure about .Zip, but the .chm and .Net files are listed as executable, which neither are. The solution is to change the extension. I zip up all of my items/project I want to sent and change the name to .zig or something. That normally works :D

They're also icons near the top of your post :D

I don't know why, but looking things over, it looks like this would be handled a lot easier in an XML file read into a dataset. I can see a properties table, events table and a Tile table. I'm not sure about the StringArray Looping vs Dataset speeds though. Personally I'm much more comfortable in a dataset because I can visually "see" how things work out. I know loading an XML Document/Schema from file is easy as Pie... like 2 lines of code with declarations.

Ironically I found plenty of Java to IL/C# converters - Microsoft Even has one and a J# compiler that compiles Java to IL.

My MSN is SlinkingFerret@hotmail.com (they wouldn't let me use my old "@yahoo.com" account because it wasn't hotmail!). I woiuld love to help you plan and get in on some actions. I want to program what I do in VB.Net primarily (Which is why I love .Net, it's cross language), but C# is also cool. Interfaces are very important and at least interface programming if not some other OOP techniques would be helpful. We need to plan things out in terms of class/library structure and goals we want to achieve, then work on who does what. I have Visio & Visual Studio (architect or enterprise... whatever came with MSDN Universal) which could help us out a bit.

Further off topic, I was introduced to a client last night called Miranda, which ran IRC, ICQ, AIM, MSM - GLP free and took about 7mg of ram to run all at once - vs 20mb that AIM takes to run by itself.

Never used Yahoo. I use AIM for work and family. ICQ is my choice, though I don't know anyone else who uses it anymore so no ICQ. More than anything I hate it that there are all these formats for Instant Messaging and having to download a stupid client and run multiple at once to talk to different people. Nothing terribly wrong with MSN, other than it's a resource hog, it doesn't have any useful unique capabilities and I've dodged needing to install it. I'm not going to install it now. Now if Trillian were truely freeware I could use that... Unfortunately it's not - it has commercial strings attached - so I can't install it on my business machine or my work machine without buying it.

MSN... ::shakes head:: So this isn't an RPG, but a RPG scripting engine. Not to be a downer, but the chances of someone actually finishing an RPG arn't great. I'm not sure if a RPG Scripting Engine would be easier or harder. I'd think it would be less work to to do overall, because you're just doing the game engine. Is this fully custom - as in you can dynamically create your own RPG system or is this static and you can create games for the system you use? What language are you using? DirectX or GDI+? It would be fun if not for MSN

Are there any open source projects working on this? � I've found two commercial applications that do this, one is a converter that costs between 1k and 20k depending on what you want - and another is a plugin for Visual Studio allowing you to program in your language and export your project to a java project. � I know it sounds like a moocher, but I'm not doing commercial applications right now - so I prefer not to spend 1k+ for the convenience of OSX and Linux people. � I know Mono is doing pretty well, but I havn't tested Mono on OSX yet ( and I have no Linux box) so I was looking for another alternative. � As a note, there are quite a few Java Byte Code to IL/C# converters around - including one by Microsoft.

You were doing a submarine adventure game last time. What are you doing now? What languages/technoligies are you planning on using?

I know this exists already. Some company charges 10,000 either per conversion or per liscense of the software. You build it in .Net and IL -> JBC. I would be VERY interested in a more freeware version :p Edit: iNet converts .Net to Java, though has price restrictions which are confusing: (rounded numbers) 1k to convert .net to Linux, 10k to convert .Net to Unix and 20k to convert .net to Mainframe. I thought if you were really converting it to Java, it's java and it would run on all the JVM's (minus come OS specific things like databases possibly)

I told someone on some non-programming boards that I was doing a character generator (creates a character for a role playing game) in .Net primarily for the PC, but I wanted to make sure I keept it platform neutral because I would love to see how it worked on OSX. By platform neutral I mean I used XML for data storage rather than MS Access. They lamblasted me for being anti-OSX. I was so confused. Then they told me if I really wanted to create something cross platform I'd do it in Java. This confused the hell out of me because for the most part, something done for the PC won't work on OSX. This would. Then they went off on how none of them had the Mono Framework and I was discriminating against them. Then about how they or their friends would never put Mono on their computers and asked why I was being anti-OSX. I let them know that despite what they chose to do, it would be available and hopefully would work perfectly on OSX. If they chose not to use it or the technology they didn't have to. It went around in circles a bit more where I ended up being a totally heartless ***** because it came down to the fact that I wasn't interesting in learning a new programming language for my project (even though I did say if anyone knew Java I would assist their conversion or seperate construction of the Application) and how Mono wasn't an option for OSX. The funny thing is that these people arn't anti-.Net. They'll talk up the benefits of .Net development like only a PC user could. Odd. They also kept saying that Mono wasn't production software - though I know companies that use it for business applications and it's past v1.0. I know it's not 100% of the .Net framework 1.1, but the way I see it, that only matters if you want it to do something that isn't implimented yet. It probobly does every basic function I'd need.

Does that work (or any similar alternative) for OS X or Linux for Mono? Or is this just PC & .Net?

This would be something you do on a target persons PC when they install it, not on your own PC durring development then?

What exactly does nMake do? I keep seeing references to a VC++ page on microsoft which talks about projects - but I can't find out what it does exactly - especially in reference to .Net

Two good reasons to use it as a tool. I've found the way most reflectors work, they're really useful in looking at a procedure, but it would take a LOT of work to piece together how an application works if you were to view one. Not newbie friendly at all.

Thank you for the advice. I also see it as with me wanting to be a programming for a career, so X years programming some random language will be better than X years on a help desk answering phones. The interview went well and they even suggested they might like to use VB.net for some future projects.