Simpler is better!

Job Market

Available jobs are a pretty good indicator of the number of development projects for a given language.  Java pretty much dominates in this area, with C# coming in a distant second, and ASP.NET and PHP not too far behind.  Not a bad showing for Microsoft, actually.

Monthly Searches

Monthly searches show pretty much the same trend, Java is the 800-lb gorilla here too.  Surprisingly, though, Javascript is second even though it's not anywhere near the top in available jobs.  I suppose that could be because it's almost the de-facto programming language of the Web, so all the hobbyist and design programmers tend to use it as well.

Open Source Projects

Ah, open source projects, the secret sauce for many programmers and the foundation of many custom development projects.  Java still wins this round, but PHP gives it a run for its money.  C# gives a strong showing as well, surprisingly--strong open source support for a proprietary language, very interesting.

Dollars Per Click

Every programming has an ecosystem of products around it, whether its training and certification, IDE's, or debugging and profiling tools.  The dollars per click that advertisers are willing to pay is a good indication of how much competition there is for upsells of the language, and in this area Java finally meets some serious competition from PHP.

Books Available

I'm not surprised that Java dominates the number of books available since it's been around the longest, but C# again makes a strong showing here coming in right after PHP.

Compiling and Building with MinGW

How to create a console application

Here's an example. The following is a code sample for a simple C program. Cut and paste it into a file named hello.c to try it out.

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  printf ("Hello\n");
  return (0);
}
           

gcc -c hello.c
           

gcc -o hello hello.o
           

gcc -o hello hello.c 
           

The following is a code sample for a simple C++ program. Cut and paste it into a file named hello.cpp to try it out.

#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
 std::cout << "Hello" << std::endl;
 return (0);
}
           

For the C++ program, use the following to compile and link:

g++ -c hello.cpp
g++ -o hello hello.o
           

How to create a windows application?

Here's an example. The following is a code sample for a simple Windows program. Cut and paste it into a file named hello.c to try it out.

   #include <windows.h>

   int WINAPI WinMain (HINSTANCE hInstance, 
                        HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, 
                        PSTR szCmdLine, 
                        int iCmdShow) 
   {
      MessageBox (NULL, "Hello", "Hello Demo", MB_OK);
      return (0);
   }
               

If you want to create a Windows executable hello.exe, from a c file called hello.c, try the following:

   gcc -c hello.c
               

   gcc -o hello hello.o -mwindows
               

If you have resources from a resource file (.rc) that also need to be added to your executable, you'll need to compile the resource file as well as your other source files and include the compiled resources when linking to create the executable. Here's an example that shows how to compile and link in a resource file named resfile.rc.

   windres -o resfile.o resfile.rc
   gcc -o hello hello.o resfile.o -mwindows
               

How to create a dll

Here's an example. Cut and paste the following into a file named dllfct.h:

   #ifdef BUILD_DLL
   // the dll exports
   #define EXPORT __declspec(dllexport)
   #else
   // the exe imports
   #define EXPORT __declspec(dllimport)
   #endif

   // function to be imported/exported
   EXPORT void tstfunc (void);
               

Cut and paste the following into a file named dllfct.c:

   #include <stdio.h>
   #include "dllfct.h"

   EXPORT void tstfunc (void)
   {
      printf ("Hello\n");
   }
               

Cut and paste the following into a file named hello.c:

   #include "dllfct.h"

   int main ()
   {
      tstfunc ();
      return (0);
   }
               

To create the dll and an executable that uses it, try the following:

   gcc -c hello.c
   gcc -c -DBUILD_DLL dllfct.c
   gcc -shared -o tst.dll -Wl,--out-implib,libtstdll.a dllfct.o
   gcc -o hello.exe hello.o -L./ -ltstdll

How to create a def file for a dll

There are several methods that can be tried in order to create a definition file (.def) when one is not supplied.

• One option is the tool, pexports which is provided in the MinGW Utilities package, mingw-utils. See the Downloads page for the Current version. If your dll has functions that use the Pascal calling convention, you'll need to use the -o option.
• Another option is the tool, impdef. More instructions on how to create def files from dlls, a copy of impdef and more information on how to use it are available at Colin Peters' site. See the Tutorials section. Other compilers may also supply versions of the impdef program that can be used to create a .def file which will work with any compiler. If you have another version of impdef from another compiler, you may wish to try it. Some handle the Pascal calling convention better than others. Borland has a version of impdef and other compiler utilities available for download at their Borland Community web site. Their Borland C++ version 5.5 compiler includes several utilities to help convert between standard formats, their formats and Microsoft's formats.
• Another option is to use nm which comes with the MinGW distribution. This option will not work for all dlls. Problems may occur if the dll is stripped or compiled as 16 bit. To use this technique, you'll need to filter the output from nm to create a def file. This can be done by hand in an editor or automated using tools like Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) or grep (global regular expression print) and sed (stream editor). Even with the automated methods, you may have to make some changes by hand if the Pascal calling convention is used by the dll. See Colin Peters' site for more details on this case. (Versions of sed and grep are available from various sites including archives that host gnuish MSDOS and archives such as Virtually Un*x that contain Win32 ports of common Unix tools and from the self-hosting MinGW port distribution. The ActiveState version of Perl works well on Win32 platforms.) Here are examples of possible filtering techniques.
  • This example uses grep and sed. If you have a dll named file.dll that you wish to create a def file for named file.def, try the following:

     
       echo EXPORTS > file.def
       nm file.dll | grep ' T _' | sed 's/.* T _//' >> file.def
                               

    To create a library file named file.a from the dll and def file, type:

       dlltool --def file.def --dllname file.dll --output-lib file.a
                               

  • This example uses Perl. Copy the following Perl script to a file called dll.pl and use it:

       open (OUTFILE,">dll.def");
       print OUTFILE "EXPORTS\n";
       open (INFILE,"dll.fil");
       while(<INFILE>)
       {
          if ($_ =~ /T _/)
          {
             $line = $_;
             $line =~ s/.* T _//;
             print OUTFILE $line;
          }
       }
       close (INFILE);
       close (OUTFILE);
                               

    If you have a dll file named file.dll. At the command line, type:

       nm file.dll > dll.fil
       perl dll.pl
                               

    A def file named dll.def will be created. You can rename this as needed. You'll also probably want to delete dll.fil when you're finished with this process.

• If you don't have any of these tools on your system, you can still use nm to create a def file and edit it by hand through an editor. For example:

     nm file.dll > dll.fil
     find " T _" dll.fil > dll.def
                          

  Replace the line at the top of dll.def that was created by the find program and shows a file name with a line that says EXPORTS. Set your editor to search for T _ and erase it and anything on the line before it, leaving only the routine names in the file.

• If the previous options don't work, you can still try to create a def file using the output from the objdump program (from the MinGW distribution). Here's an example.

   
     objdump -p file.dll > dll.fil
                          

  Search for [Ordinal/Name Pointer] Table in dll.fil and use the list of functions following it to create your def file.

출처: http://www.mingw.org/docs.shtml