Member Avatar for Terry Robinson

I'm an experience Windows programmer and I'd like to do some work for my wife's school on Mac OSX. The trouble is, I have found no decent programming tools for that system. When I work on Windows I use Delphi or Visual Studio. Does a visual, objected oriented RAD system exist for Mac or not? While I'm at it, what is a good database (local or LAN) for that system?

When I've asked people at Mac stores these questions, they look at me like no one ever asked before. Somebody must know how to program these things. Or, so I hope.

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Member Avatar for John A

The first tool(s) that you'll want to get your hands on is Mac OS X's official IDE, Xcode. You can download it for free from Apple's website, along with a host of other useful applications for producing and deploying applications:
http://developer.apple.com/tools/

You might find it too limited, and if that's the case, check out the open source tool MonoDevelop. It supports C# and a few other languages, and is probably your best bet for finding a replacement for Visual Studio.

Member Avatar for TheNNS

does xcode have compiler built in? i usually just manually compile code in the command prompt.

Member Avatar for John A

>does xcode have compiler built in?
No. When you install the Apple Developer Tools, it installs Xcode along with gcc/g++, and a host of other tools. Then when you click "build" from Xcode's project window, it invokes gcc or g++, and sends the output back to the build window.

Member Avatar for TheNNS

oh gotcha, i prefer to compile my code manually anyways.

Member Avatar for John A

For small files that need to be compiled, the command line is more convenient. When working on larger projects, an IDE makes it easier to organize all the source files and batch compile everything.

Member Avatar for TheNNS

well, since i only write very small programs, that have 2-4 small classes, the command line is good for me.

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