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Free, Free At Last!

Professional Development Software That Won’t Break The Piggy-Bank!
Thursday 30 November 2006.
 

Programming can be an expensive business. So it’s always nice to find a bargain. And the best bargains of all are the free ones!

Surprisingly, there is now quite a range of first rate development software that can be yours (legally) for a total outlay of Zero Dollars - which, at the current rate of conversion, coincidentally works out at precisely Zero Pounds, Euros and Yen too!

I am not just talking about ‘demo’ software. Nor do I mean Open Source. While there are many good quality Open Source packages, in this article I want to concentrate on fully-functional professional products. These include development tools and IDEs from well-known and not such well-known companies, targeting languages ranging from C++ and Basic to Smalltalk and Eiffel.

The Big Hitters

Let’s start with the big guys. Until fairly recently, the idea of Microsoft giving away software seemed about as likely as an RAF squadron of airborne Gloucestershire Old Spots. But recently the all-dominant software tycoons seem to have experienced an uncharacteristic attack of magnanimity which caused them to release free single-language ‘Express’ editions of Visual Studio! I’m sure most of you already know about these – so I won’t belabour the point. Suffice to say, this stuff is good. There are Express Editions of C#, C++, VB.NET and J# (a .NET Java-like language which, to the best of my knowledge, nobody actually uses), plus an ASP .NET Web Developer edition and a free version of Microsoft’s database, SQL Server. Grab a copy or two from: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express.

C# Express

Less well-known but equally good are the recently released Turbo Explorer development tools from the company formerly known as Borland. It’s been a bizarre – and not entirely happy – year for the Borland Developer Team. In February, the parent company announced that it no longer wanted the development team and was putting it up for sale. In November, the company announced that a buyer had been found and was – wait for it - itself! Yup, Borland sold them; and Borland bought them. As ‘spin-offs’ go this is about as spun as it gets. Whether or not the ‘new company’, Code Gear (www.codegear.com) can ever recover from their ten months in a limbo of self-generated FUD remains to be seen. What is more certain is that they genuinely do have some fine development tools, including some well-featured free editions.

Turbo Delphi
New To Delphi? Follow our Introduction to Delphi.

Once again, these are single-language (and platform) products and you can only run one edition on any one PC. There is a C++ for Win32 development, a C# for .NET and two versions of the company’s famous Delphi (Object Pascal) IDE – one which targets Win32 and another that targets .NET. As a long-term Delphi developer, I make no secret of the fact that Delphi is one of my very favourite programming languages and environments. At a total cost of Nothing, this is one bargain you really shouldn’t miss. The Turbo Explorer products are available from: www.turboexplorer.com.

Out Of The Mainstream…

Looking further afield, how about Prolog? One of the slickest implementations (albeit one that, being strongly typed, won’t please the purists), is Visual Prolog. This is a Prolog compiler with its own powerful IDE including an editor, debugger and visual design tools.

Visual Prolog

The latest in a line of Prolog products which were, at one time, marketed as ‘Turbo Prolog’ by Borland, Visual Prolog is now back with its original developers, The Prolog Development Centre, and the Personal Edition is free from www.visual-prolog.com/.

See also: The Bitwise Guide To Free Prolog systems

One of my own favourite languages – and certainly a highly influential one – is Smalltalk. Developed in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Smalltalk’s graphical user interface even now continues to influence everything from the Mac to Windows. Smalltalk was also the language which brought Object Orientation into the mainstream of programming.

Dolphin Smalltalk

There are two superb commercial implementations with free editions. Dolphin Smalltalk is a beautiful, Windows-only Smalltalk from Object-Arts. Download the free Community Edition from the company’s web site, www.object-arts.com. For a fast start to Dolphin Smalltalk (albeit version 5), see The Bitwise Dolphin Smalltalk Tutorial.

Cincom VisualWorks

For cross-platform development there is also Cincom Smalltalk. Available for Mac, Windows and UNIX/Linux, you can download Cincom’s VisualWorks IDE free for non-commercial development (be warned: it’s a big download so broadband is pretty much a requirement). Go to www.cincomsmalltalk.com.

Another interesting and influential object oriented language is Eiffel, which provides multiple-inheritance, strict typing and innovative features such as ‘Design By Contract’. One of the main reasons why more developers haven’t tried it is almost certainly its price. The commercial IDE, Eiffel Studio, costs upwards of $4,799. The good news is that Eiffel now has a dual licence policy which means that you can download the self same software, feature-complete, for free as long as you don’t use it for commercial applications. Get your copy from: www.eiffel.com.

Eiffel Studio

There are quite a few PHP environments and potentially one of the most interesting might be Qadram’s QStudio. Release candidate 1 is due for release at the start of December and at the time of writing I have yet to see the software itself though I have seem some very tantalising screenshots. It looks as though this might be a sort of Visual Basic / Delphi-type IDE for PHP. I await this one with anticipation. See their web site: www.qadram.com.

Ruby In Steel

I would be remiss at this point to fail to mention the Ruby In Steel Ruby IDE for Visual Studio. I admit a bias here as I am one of the developers of this software. While we are working towards a commercial edition to be released in January 2007, we also have a free product complete with editing, debugging and a whole bunch of good things available right now. Download from www.sapphiresteel.com.

In this article, I’ve concentrated on free software products produced by professional software companies. In fact, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are also lots of other free programming tools, such as the excellent Squeak Smalltalk, a whole clutch of Prologs and Goodness knows how many Open Source projects.

I reckon this lot should keep me busy throughout Christmas and well into the New Year. See you all in 2007!

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Forum

  • Free, Free At Last!
    12 January 2007, by Francis Fish

    Still looking for a decent common lisp environment. Yeah, I know you can use emacs and the GNU common lisp but it ain’t integrated and there’s no help to speak of. I’ve heard of brilliant Lisp environments that were streets ahead of everything else a few years ago but still haven’t managed to find a decent IDE in the OSS/community download space.

  • Free, Free At Last!
    18 December 2006

    Interesting to see, but it has always been my belief that development tools should be free, why should we have to pay to develop on a platform that we have to buy anyway. Yes I am talking about Windows!!!

    Incidentley I can see no mention of OCaml, stick that in your search engine and smoke it!!

  • Free, Free At Last!
    5 December 2006

    SharpDevelop? free C# VB.Net and ASP.Net integrated test framework .net 1.1 and 2.0 under one ide, this has come along in leaps and bounds and definately deserves more than a mention here I believe!! MonoDevelop?

    I believe that major players such as Microsoft and Borland or whatever they call themselves these days have finally realised that the majority of "Bedroom Coders" can’t afford hundreds of pounds to persue a hobby, and perhaps just maybe if I were a cynical person I may think that they were beginning to feel the squeeze from open source development tools and felt this was their lifeline into an otherwise un-tapped wealth of talent that will contribute back into these companies.

  • Free, Free At Last!
    1 December 2006

    What about Sun Netbeans and IBM Eclipse?


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