What's next?

Hey all,
I have recently gotten up to speed on grasshopper thanks to attending the ACADIA workshop in Chicago this year and I am hungry to progress further. Would someone please explain the pros and cons to VB, C#, and rhinoscript. I am trying to decide where to focus my energy. Which one should I learn next. Are there ways to learn these languages outside of the Rhino seminars. I live in Oklahoma which could not be farther from Seattle or Miami, where most of the Rhino clinics take place. I am hoping one of these languages might be common to other industries so I might find some classes closer to Oklahoma.

Thanks,
Stan

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on December 13, 2009 at 3:23am

Hi Stan,

RhinoScript is used everywhere in practice, it's an extremely popular, mature and proven language. It's relatively easy to learn and we'll keep on developing it but it will most likely never run on MacOS. You cannot use RhinoScript in combination with Grasshopper.

VB.NET and C# are practically the same, one does not offer a significant advantage over the other in terms of functionality and performance. C# is the more popular language in the worldwide programmer community, but I suspect VB is more popular among architects, partly because many of them came from VBScript and partly because it is simply a more forgiving syntax. With VB and C# you'll be able to write custom scripts for Grasshopper, custom Grasshopper components and Rhino plugins. The current DotNET SDK for Rhino is somewhat cumbersome to use since it is a direct port of the C++ SDK, however we are working on a new SDK which will be much clearer and also platform independent.

It is much harder to learn VB and C#, since they are Object Oriented languages which is a less obvious approach (compared to procedural languages such as RhinoScript) to non-programmer minds.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Evert Amador on December 13, 2009 at 7:25am

Hi David,

When you say "we are working on a new SDK which will be much clearer and also platform independent" are you talking about windows and mac os? if so will the sdk on mac be accesed withing a scripting editor inside rhino or via xcode?

The other day I was trying the Panelling Tools commands impremented in the mac version and I though if GH will someday make it to the mac if somehow you can port the interface, am I being silly and very optimistic?

Cheers!

Evert

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on December 13, 2009 at 8:30am

The new SDK is supposed to cure three weak points of the old SDK:

1) Clarity. The old SDK is very C++ specific, it differs on many levels from how the DotNET framework is constructed. This means that DotNET programmers are often confused when using the old SDK. RhinoCommon (the new SDK), has been redesigned from the ground up. It will be a Rhino5 thing only, but we will most likely ship a version with Grasshopper.

2) Performance. We're moving a lot of simple operations into the DotNET part, meaning a lot less communication between C++ and DotNET. This will speed up many operations on atomic classes such as points, vectors, planes, xforms, circles etc.

3) Platform independence. RhinoCommon is supposed to work on both Windows and MacOS, via the Mono project. Thee are still plenty of issues with this but we've had some encouraging results which at least prove the concept.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Damien Alomar on December 13, 2009 at 8:43am

Yes, the new SDK being platform independent will allow one to access it on either windows or a mac. Writing for the new SDK would be along the same lines as it currently is...IOW you have compiled plugins that get written in VS or possibly even SharpDevelop, but there will also be the IronPython option as well. I'm not sure if there's a native dotNET IDE/compiler on the Mac

With C++ plugins (paneling tools is one of them), its not necessarily easier to get them to work on the mac, but I guess the process of porting them is understood a bit better (this is pretty much what Marlin has been doing for years now). With dotNET plugins, they need the equivalent of the dotNET framework implemented on the mac before they can do anything. There's a project out there called Mono which does exactly that, and the McNeel folks have been doing some work on figuring out how to use that with Rhino. Last I heard it was quite promising, with plugins that interfaced only with Rhino being almost dragged and dropped on the mac and working. The one big issue though was custom drawn forms, which is something that GH relies on very heavily.

Permalink Reply by Stan Carroll on December 13, 2009 at 9:42am

David,

Thanks for shedding some light on the different languages. As and architect and one who would appreciate a more forgiving syntax, it sounds like VB makes most sense for me. I will see what courses I can find and take a class. Are there any great specific resources out there for VB you could recommend?

I lost you guys on the discussion about SDK. No worries, in due time I may catch up.

Thanks again for your help on this and keep up the great work!!!

Stan

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