Quote:
Originally Posted by Konr  Linux is built on C, but that doesn't mean you have to code in C for it. Windows is not popular because developers code in C++; it is popular because Windows makes using computers easy for non-technical people; it thus became a popular environment to code for because it has a large user-base. You can code in any language for any platform so long as a suitable compiler/linker exists. |
I agree 100% with this. In fact, some flavors of Linux even come with C and C++ compilers. There can also be a Java compiler (gcj, along with the byte-code interpreter gij), an Ada95 compiler (gnat) and even a Fortran77 compiler (g77). Then there is gas, the GNU Assembler, which is able to assemble things for many architectures as well as nasm, the Netwide Assembler, which is available for many operating systems, including Windows and various flavors of Linux, though I'm not a fan of nasm really. You can also use the JDK on Linux for Java development too. And there is an open source project known as
mono that provides the tools necessary to run and develop .NET applications on Linux, Windows, OS X and more. There are also various flavors of BASIC that you can use. In fact,
FreeBASIC is a 32-bit compiler implementation and extension of QuickBASIC that happens to be available for Linux, Windows and even DOS for those that wish to develop for DOS (FreeDOS exists after all).
In short, if you want to compile something in a certain language on Linux (barring various Assembler syntaxes like MASM and TASM and nasm since they aren't quite 100% compatible), chances are good that you can find something that will do it.
