I have been using the CTD since version 1.1. Currently I'm still using 2.1 PTF4, mainly for doing rich client CRUDs under windows 98-Vista against Centura SQLBase, MS Sql Server or MS Access. I have not upgraded from 2.1 to the newer versions, so I can only talk about the relatively old 2.1 from 2001.(§) Our applications typically have about 150 form windows, make heavy use of classes (still called 'user defined variables' in 2.1) and integrate MS Office. We have no stability issues or memory leaks.

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The development environment is a bit long in the tooth, though: no intellisense, no smart debugging and practically unusable without a mouse. This may have changed with newer versions. There is nothing in the nature of CTD that forces you to write un-maintainable code. Using classes and file-includes you can have a good degree of reusability in your code if you designed your code to be reusable, that is.

A problem for maintainability may be that CTDs variables and classes do not have access modifiers like 'private' or 'protected'. Also: no interfaces or abstract classes. On the other hand: multiple inheritance. The 'outline structure' of the code takes some getting used to, but I even sometimes miss the outline structure when I get lost in a sprawling C#-file with variable declarations and event handlers all over the place.

The controls for 2.1 where pretty complete but we still had to manually integrate 'modern' things like toolbars, datepickers or tab-controls. OTOH it even has a numerical input field out of the box. One of the Unify-Newsletters stated that they added a lot of eye-candy, to let the apps look more up-to-date. The mtable-Extensions for table windows where very helpfull, available here:. Integrating 3rd-party-DLLs (e.g. For integrating a smartcard-reader) is not really fun, especially when they use structs.

Oh: and the 'Centura Report Builder' is a royal pain in the derierre. A big pro is the SDK that shipps with the CTD: this makes it very easy to integrate self written tools into the development environment, e.g. Satellite tool kit torrent download.

For code generation. Bottom line: We used and still use CTD for scalable and maintainable apps. The learning curve can be a bit steep because of the unusual outline structure and can lead the unwary towards writing 'ugly' code: e.g. Lots of static functions, lots of code in the 'Message Actions' and problems with variable scoping. I think your success with CTD will depend on the nature of the application you want to write: for a rich client CRUD you might almost certainly be better off than with.net, for a web app I honestly don't know. Keep in mind that all this relates to the 8 year old 2.1 version of CTD.

Things may be radically different now. If you can, get an evaluation version. Edit: Aside from the pros and cons of the language alone, you might want to consider that CTD is a niche.

There are not many free tools and I have yet to find a vibrant community (there was a newsgroup, but the server went down after the merger - maybe its still around somwhere). So, googling up help on specific Problems may no be easy. (§) I did not continue the upgrade path from 2.1 to 5.1 because after the merge with Unify they wanted to make patches available only for subscribers to their support scheme (called GLS). Since I was not going to pay for bugfixes I deceided to continue using 2.1 for our legacy apps and switch to.net for new apps. I think they revised this later on. I have been working with Team Developer (formerly Centura Builder, SQL Windows, etc.) for 9 years.

IMO things have not changed too much from the version 2.1 which Stephan Keller described in his comprehensive answer. The company I am working for is currently using TD version 5.1 and considering upgrade to TD 5.2 next year. We are developing a business software product, run against Oracle database. The application has more than 500 form windows and several hundred reports. I think Team Developer scales well to both simple small applications, and larger enterprise application suites with big RDBMS and hundreds of users. The code outline makes the IDE easy to approach and I think the learning curve will not be that steep. The code editing is possible even without mouse, since there is a number of handy keyboard shortcuts.