Software Programming n00b

xentech

xentech

NFLol.
Aug 12, 2008
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Great Britain
Ok I have this idea for a fairly simple but semi-hard to program desktop app that I want to create for personal and perhaps commercial use.. I know PHP but that is all.

My question is which programming language is best to learn just to create this app and more importantly which software is best to use to start coding in.. I would prefer a visual environment I guess, unless it's pretty easy to build a GUI by just coding in text...

I think C++ is the best option due to the vast amount of info available but I welcome any feedback, the more important thing is I'm not sure what to start coding in. The app needs a GUI albeit a pretty simple one.

Any help appreciated.

PS. I know this is for web programming really but I'm sure people can help.
 


As the resident .NET fanatic, recommend you check out C#. You can literally draw the GUI without writing a single line of code, and there are plenty of tutorials to get you started. The API is well rounded and will probably have everything you need, along with complete documentation. The Syntax is fairly similar to C++, and very similar to Java. It's easy and free to get started, just download Visual C# Express 2010. If you insist upon using C++, however (which is not a bad choice!), I recommend you check out the Qt framework: Qt - A cross-platform application and UI framework
 
tainted said:
As the resident .NET fanatic, recommend you check out C#. You can literally draw the GUI without writing a single line of code, and there are plenty of tutorials to get you started. The API is well rounded and will probably have everything you need, along with complete documentation. The Syntax is fairly similar to C++, and very similar to Java. It's easy and free to get started, just download Visual C# Express 2010. If you insist upon using C++, however (which is not a bad choice!), I recommend you check out the Qt framework: Qt - A cross-platform application and UI framework
Click to expand...

C# may be a good idea, there is a decent community and ammount of info for it. Someone also told me that like PHP, C++ has a lot of poor information due to it's popularity which can obviously hinder learning effective programming.

I will check it out and see if I like it, any other suggestions?

The main function of the app is to scrape information from the active window, process it and then output results based on the processing.
 
subigo said:
How have I never heard of this? +rep
Click to expand...

Probably because they concentrate on their mobile product over their desktop product. It's pretty neat as you can essentially swap between languages within the code, so for example you can use jquery to find page elements then use php to process the data.
 
Based on what you know I'd say go with Java and use Swing. An IDE like Netbeans has built in Swing editor in it. Best of all when you're done it'll work cross platform.

C++ isn't a bad idea but there is going to be a much larger learning curve if you ever plan to fully understand it only knowing PHP.
 
+1 for C#

The GUI builder in VS is kick-ass, both for WPF and WinForms.

Also, I'd recommend going with WPF versus WinForms. In WPF, you can define the GUI in a XML-like file, which is extremely easy to edit / understand. Besides, WPF is the (much) newer technology and it has better support for media integration, among other things. Check it out.
 
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