Hi Howard!

 HB> I don't have much money, I have Borland C++ Pro 3.5.  I can get
 HB> Visual C++
 HB> at a student rate.  I would prefer a compiler which I can use to
 HB> create
 HB> OS/2 apps, but not as much as I would prefer one which gets me a
 HB> job.  I
 HB> have taken C courses, am currently taking object methodology and
 HB> will be
 HB> taking C++ courses this spring unless I get a job which will be
 HB> requiring
 HB> too many hours at that time.  (I am working on my masters).

I LOVE my gcc compiler. The OS/2 version (emx/gcc) can be used to 
create OS/2 PM apps as well as for porting UNIX-apps to OS/2. There is a
way to make your apps run as 32bit DOS apps. The UNIX-like libs are 
almost the same as you find on UNIX-machines. The handling is UNIX-like, too. 
Having worked on mainframes I guess you might not be too familiar with the
way C compilers work, so I think this might be a good start, it lets you 
understand, what you / your compiler has to do from source to executable. 
You won't have any problem with any ide of any commercial compiler after 
that because you will understand what it means when prompting you for this 
or that. It compiles C, C++ and Objective C code. And it produces fairly 
good code. And it's free.

If you want to produce OS/2 PM apps you should also get IBM's Developer's
Toolkit (it includes the header files for the API routines, additional libs,
samples and some more useful stuff).

 HB> I think I would like a compiler which supports HP's Standard
 HB> Template
 HB> Library.

Don't know... Maybe there is a port available.

 HB> The only C++ compiler I see mentioned by name in the want ads
 HB> is
 HB> Microsoft's.  I currently boot to a Windows 95 partition to run
 HB> Visual
 HB> Basic.

Normally it is not too important to know a special compiler - more 
commonly it's the libraries that you should know. If you use the (C-) API for 
OS/2's Presentation Manager or X-Windows under UNIX there is a basic 
standard you have to learn. After that you're free to use Toolkits or Class 
libraries that help you to speed up development but also make you dependent on 
a not common standard. Of course companies may search for programmers that 
are familiar with some special software they use. But this is still a bit 
of a lottery :-) I think it's the wisest thing to concentrate on becoming 
a real good C/C++ programmer and understanding the tools you use whatever 
they are called. Visual development is a nice thing but there's still plenty 
of stuff to be done by hand :-)

 Martin "Herbert"
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