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>John, with all due respect, I doubt very much that Dabo has "almost everything" WinDev has for the desktop. I dont think Dabo will even come close to the full desktop IDE, tool-set, and control-set that WinDev offers a developer. If you are referring to my post iro grids and tabs - even that post only scratches the surface of what those controls offer - I was making a quick list of things that interested me for a form I had been working on.
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>Actually I can only go on what's in the feature brochure they put on their website. Other than what I've said in the past (IDE, webapps, etc) I don't see much difference.
>Grids appears about the same - including changing colors, formula in cells.
>Windows appears about the same (in fact Ctrl++ works to increase font size).
>charting about the same
>Multi-line about the same
>seaches about the same
>images about the same
>trees about the same
>I could go on. But what I think you are missing is a vast number of python lib's out in the cloud and all work with Dabo. For example: I said Dabo did not support direct excel output. But that's not really true there are at least three different lib's that provide direct output to excel with nothing more than a simple function call (passing the data set - a dict). So saying Dabo is limited is really not a correct answer because Dabo is nothing but a framework using all the python lib's available.
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>I'm sure that WinDev might make it easier (the IDE is impressive) - but to say that Dabo does not have some sort of similar control or that it's missing something I'm not to sure I would agree. The desktop has been around for a long time and the python guys have done an excellent job of providing almost everything anyone has thought of with regard to screen controls. And of course if it doesn't it can be built - which has been literally done by thousands of python programmers.
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>Jos - I don't think less of WinDev because Dabo (python) can match it. I see the advantage of WinDev. It's all right in front of you as you program. The importance of that fact can't be disregarded. Remember why we choose IDE's - because they are RAD. Otherwise, we would all program in C - after all C can do everything Dabo, WinDev can do. And most likely C would be faster running. But I don't want to program in C do you?
>Johnf

Yes, I see where you are coming from - Python has a large library of 3rd party tools that one can download and plug-in. Indeed via that comparison then Dabo, being a Python framework, will probably be able to download and incorporate a library that does most everything that one can find in WinDev (or .Net or whatever). Accepted.

WinDev has this mostly all built in but also you can include any .Net assembly, ActiveX/COM control, etc. etc. so it too is extensible even beyond it's comprehensive suite of tools. VFP similarly can use COM/ActiveX and so it too can do most anything. Then these comparisons become difficult to be meaningful - where do you draw the line?

For me, WinDev is truly an all-in-one solution, I think, for a vast variety of possible end-user apps. But sometimes one needs something special, perhaps some extraordinary speed, in which case you plug in an assembler library or a C library or whatever (I know some developers who needed to do that). But it contains so many controls natively that it would be the exception to do that rather than the norm (as is the case with VFP where I use 10+ 3rd party tools today and have, in the past, used far more at one time or another).

Yes, I agree, I dont want to program in C :) I also care less and less about code optimization and perfection. I want RAD, I want solutions quickly, I want customer responsiveness. I dont care if the code is sub-optimal in terms of performance because the hardware will compensate and our users and target market are not doing anything that requires every last nanosecond of performance to be squeezed out of it. We are business people first, data crunchers and charters. We are developers second.