What's a good non-web application development environment for someone comfortable with PHP/Javascript/Mysql?

I would like to be able to write database driven applications (i.e. standalone apps that are not web based and don't require a browser or Apache server to run)

开发者_开发技巧I have attempted to do this in Codegear C++ Builder in the past but even though my 'background' is in that (C++ OOP with Borland Builder) it is so far removed from doing the same sort of thing with PHP/mysql and other web technologies that I found that I couldn't get very far for a lot of effort getting it to work. It was a while ago now but I was using the built-in database engine that comes with Builder and I just found it frustrating and difficult.

In other words - Is there something out there that will allow me to make use of web based languages to write standalone applications (specifically PHP/Javascript/mysql)

You can stick with PHP if you want. There are QT bindings, GTK bindings, OSX/Cocoa bindings, and you can call Win32 functions. I don't know how stable all of those are, but you can do GUI in PHP as well as the command line stuff.

As for other languages... PHP is very C like. It started as basically a scripting wrapper around C (IIRC), which is why you have functions named after the C standard library (like strstr). C like languages will feel quite familiar.

I would think Python would probably be the closest to PHP. It's a scripting language, syntax is somewhat close, it has a ton of libraries, and is very well supported and commonly used. I'd imagine it would feel pretty familiar. Using indenting instead of brackets for blocks can throw some people, but it fit the way I already indented my code.

Ruby is quite popular, and is also a scripting language. I think it's farther away, syntax wise, than Python, but I've never really used it so I can't promise that. I know it has at least GTK bindings.

Perl has a lot of resources and bindings, but isn't as easy to read as PHP since you have to learn the special variables like @_. It was never really my cup of tea.

You do have the C/C++ stuff, and Java has it's large library. You may want to go that way since you say you've used C++ before. If you're on a Mac (or willing to use GNUStep) you could go with Objective-C/Cocoa. That's getting rather far from PHP syntax though.

All of these languages have database connections. You don't mention what platform you're on.

But for easy to work with, quick to pick up, works all sorts of places, and can definitely do GUIs... Python would be a good choice to look at.

You could always use PHP. It is a decent command-line / programing application. Other than that all I can say is that you knowledge of database access and storage will be helpful but by the end of the day you are going to need to learn a new language.

Most languages have libraries for database access. Just pick one that you like the feel of. It is also a good idea to choose one that is popular (for the community support) and free libraries are always nice. Also look for good documentation and one that is fairly standard.

A nice thing to know is that javascript and php syntax are very similar to many other languages. (Javascript looks almost identical to C and C++). Just read the main language tutorial then the database API tutorial and you should be good to go