Rick Grehan
A new version of IBM's Visual Age C++ development environment for OS/2 combines visual development tools with a compiler that generates executable programs comparable to those generated by Watcom's C/C++. Visual Age C++ ($449 and up; for more information, call (800) 426-3333, and ask for "star 725" or contact
http://www.torolab.ibm.com
on the Internet), for use with OS/2 2.11 and OS/2 Warp version 3 or higher, is descended from a similarly named Smalltalk development system. In fact, most of the environment's Visual Builder component executes in Smalltalk, although you would never know it.
Visual Age's
integrated development environment
(IDE) consists of a number of int
eroperating tools. Although you could use Visual Age simply as a C/C++ development system, it places heavy emphasis on the paradigm of constructing an application by wiring together software "parts." This parts concept is fully realized in the Visual Builder, a classic visual development system in which you assemble programs by dragging icons (parts) out of a toolbar, dropping them into your application's window, and then defining execution behavior by linking the parts together.
I used the environment to build a window that manages a phone-list database consisting of a data-entry field, an Add button, and a listbox. When I typed a new name into the entry field and pressed the Add button, the entry field's contents were appended to the list in the listbox. Within Visual Builder, I assembled this application by first dragging and dropping the entry field, button, and listbox from a tool palette to the window. Next, I established a link between the button and the listbox by drawing a connection line betw
een the two. The Builder then simultaneously prompts and guides you through defining what action activates the connection (pressing the button); what method in the listbox is "fired" by that action (appending an entry); and where the data associated with the method comes from (the entry field). Through all of this, you don't write one jot of C++ code; Visual Builder does it.
Along with the Visual Builder, Visual Age arrives with the usual host of development tools: browser, debugger, and performance analyzer. IBM also provides Open Class, a set of C++ class libraries that represents IBM's answer to Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). Visual Age can also directly generate System Object Model (SOM) objects.
The performance of executables generated by the Visual Age compiler appears to be on a par with that of my favorite compiler, Watcom C/C++. I moved the BYTEmark source code into a Visual Age project, compiled it, and got neck-and-neck results. Watcom scored indexes of .40 for the integer test and
.26 for the floating-point test, while Visual Age turned in an index of .43 for integer and .24 for floating-point. (Both were run in an OS/2 full screen within Warp 3.0 on a 66-MHz 486.)
screen_link (50 Kbytes)
Visual Age's environment workframe shows a make operation in progress.
A New Age for OS/2 Programmers
