Project 7 – GUI Object-Oriented Languages

What GUI language is better for simple gaming?

When I read the question, I kind of felt that the parameters of the question were a little vague. I speak of this with the idea that "best" is subjective. Being that much of my opinion on the subject would be based on researching text as opposed to my own experience (or current lack of it) with working with GUI languages, I needed to create some form of criteria with which to base my judgment, while pulling only from the resources assigned to me (See Sources).

I decided to focus on the following criteria:

1. Ease of learning/coding language
   
2. Ease of using the IDE
   
3. Use/Reach of the resulting game.
   

When it comes to ease of use, it is easy to argue that Visual Basic is easier to learn than Java, because it is. Visual Basic works off of BASIC; which, at its very core was designed to be a simple programming language. Java is not a hard language for a programmer to learn; however; it is harder to write and maintain code within the language. I am not necessarily saying that this is a "ding" against Java, but it is something that I had to consider when comparing it to my criteria. In theory, I can learn either language in 21 days, according to "SAMS Teach Yourself…" books.

When it comes to actually creating the application with the GUI I initially thought that Visual Basic would be the preferred choice (trying to put bias aside), but then after reading the features of NetBeans IDE and the offered plugins that seemed to offer the same features as Visual Studio, I again felt like I could go either way with my decision. Due to the fact that the articles provided did not really cover the same information, for easy comparison, I "cheated" and found screenshots of the two IDEs side-by-side, and it would appear that they match up quite well.

Being an avid gamer, as well as the owner of machines running both Mac and Windows operating systems I really found that the third criteria really made the difference for me. Unlike Visual Basic, Java's built in virtual machine allows for applications (games) created in its language to be run over the internet, as opposed to applications created in Visual Basic, which must be downloaded and ran locally. While Visual Basic .NET would overcome a part of this, it still requires whichever machine that is running the application to have .NET (which only works on Microsoft operating systems). If I were creating even a simple game, I would want my scope to be as wide as possible. Java's non-proprietary, cross-platform model would be ideal for someone who wishes to disperse their little creation to a wide audience. The gamer would only need the occasional Java update, and they would be able to interact with the game on the web.

In the end, my bias against all that is Microsoft may still be swaying my decision, but either way I feel that Java is the better language for designing simple games.

Sources:

1. •BlueJ - http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/tools/bluej/
2. •GUI Alternatives - http://leepoint.net/notes-java/GUI/misc/80gui-generator.html
3. •Visual Basic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic