20 replies to this topic

[cople]

Hi,
Can someone tell me what is the difference between languages, libraries, gui's, toolboxes, wrappers, etc., please? I recently had a class in OOP Logic and one called Intro to C++, so my understanding of building something from wild parts is only very basic.
Thank you.

[Orjan]

Different languages means that the semantics of how you write is different, and the different commands work different. it's called languages, as you can express the same thing in different ways, some reminds of each other, while others don't at all, as with spoken languages.

libraries, is a collection of premade functions for a language to reuse in your code. you can compare it to a normal library, where you can borrow others work and use that instead of redo everything yourself.

GUI, means Graphical User Interface and is what the user will use to control the program written.

[cople]

Thanks for the help.

Can I also ask, what about toolboxes and wrappers?
And how do I choose an IDE?

Edited by cople, 12 July 2009 - 12:16 PM.

[relapse]

A toolbox is a tools made for the language, premade code basically. Wrappers "wrap" other functions or libraries.

[cople]

Thanks for the reply. I must say, however, that I still don't quite understand. What do they do for people? What benefits are there to using them?

[Orjan]

an IDE is an Integrated Development Environment, i.e an text editor who lets you Edit your source code, Compile your program (if needed for the language), Run the program, and Debug trace it by menues. Many also includes a GUI-builder for the application you're building.

This is the program you usually use when programming.

[cople]

Ah. Thank you, Orjan. That makes sense.
Can you tell me what toolboxes and wrappers are, and if I need them, and what for?

[ravmonster]

what????????
CAN'T UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING.........

[Orjan]

toolboxes and wrappers are different name on some libraries, usually. Probably not as ordered and item specific as a library is. A Wrapper is usually a library that enables use of another library that was not specifically made for that language, or to make two libraries work alike each other on the surface, as on how to use them, leaving the basics untouched.

In my opinion, a ToolBox for me is my personal collection of good-to-have-functions that can be reused for many purposes. I am not sure if this is the common interpetation.

[cople]

Thanks for the reply Orjan.

So what all type tools might I need to get in order to completely write, start to finish, a Python program, with a gui, that uses SQL Express for its data store?

I know I'd need an IDE. If the IDE didn't have the ability to create a gui (like some of these here: wiki.python.org/moin/IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironments), would I write the code in the first IDE then load the code into a second IDE to add the gui?
Does the IDE handle "setting up" the interface with the SQL database back-end?

[Orjan]

No, what a GUI-IDE does, is that it generates basic code snippets on positioning and other preferences for the different items dragged and dropped for the gui-maker. If you only had a text editor possibility, you would have to be doing that coding by your own.

About the setting up of SQL-connections, I'm not sure what the IDE's do and not, but usually, to set up a connection to a database is usually only 2-3 lines of code, and is easy to reuse from program to program, as the most languages has either built in support for this, or with libraries you add on.

[WingedPanther]

An example of a wrapper would be gtkmm. It is a C++ wrapper for the C GTK+ library. It takes the functions/data of the C library and "wraps" them into a class that supports the more advanced techniques of C++. The GNU Multi-Precision library does something similar to wrap the (ugly) C functions and variables into numeric classes with operators overloaded to avoid the C syntax.