Free application development tools can be found, but which tool is the best and which application tool is right for your needs are two important questions that need to be asked before you begin a search for free application development tools.
Which free application development tool is right for my needs?
The majority of people searching for a free application development tool are small businesses or home businesses that are looking to streamline their work processes and better organize their data. For a small business or a home business a full application development platform is too expensive and complicated to be of any value in both the long term and short term.
A free application development tool is more likely to be scaled down so that a novice user can quickly master its functions and because the software was designed for novices it will most likely have a graphical user interface (GUI). A GUI is what makes software easy to navigate by turning complex code into graphical actions that can be easily controlled.
In this author's experience I have found that one free application development tool stands out above all others. This free application development tool is called eDeveloper by Magic Software. There are other free application development tools such as Netbeans and Lazerus but without getting too technical eDeveloper remains the soundest solution. The free version of eDeveloper is called Discovery and they are currently offering a special promotion where the best designed application made on the Discovery platform wins a free iPod.
Why is Discovery the best free application development tool?
I recommend discovery because it offers the most capability with other programming languages. Netbeans is JAVA based and is limited to most web applications, while Discovery was designed to work with many programs no matter what language they were written in. Plus what Netbeans is open-source, eDeveloper is familiar to thousands of Magic developers who are always willing to help answer questions in forums and help new application developers get acquainted.
For more information about free application development tools check out Wikipedia's page, or visit http://www.magicsoftwareblogs.com/eDeveloper/landing/?md=viral for information on the free Discovery eDeveloper platform.