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Want to Write a Program - Where to Start?

O

Orwick_Alefgard

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 31, 2002
Messages
83
Hey Everyone:

I have recently come into some spare time in the evenings and was toying with the idea of learning how to write a program I've been thinking about recently.

I have worked in the IT industry for 5 years, so I would not call myself technically unintelligent. On the flip-side, I have never done any development work (other than some simple batch files, which in my mind, don't count! :D ). I did take a programming class in college, but that was almost 10 years ago, so assume that I don't have any programming background.

My question is that I just don't know where to start. I mean, there are a million programming languages and a ton of IDE's, and they all proclaim to be the coolest thing since sliced bread.


So any suggestions?
  • I only want to code for windows.
  • I would prefer something that is easy/intermediate to pick up.
  • And not to sound anal, but I would like something that looks good. For instance, apparently the GUI stuff for Java is Swing and I think that is looks very unpolished. (I could just be showing my ignorance here, though...)
Anyway, if you have questions or need more detail, just let me know.

Thanks!

Orwick
 
Swing has many look & feels, i wouldn't discount java immediately.
Java Swing Tutorial: look & feel examples

to learn java though, it will take a little longer to learn all the boilerplate code you have to write with classes and such over something like python where you can pretty much start typing right away.

For sheer ease of getting back into programming, i'd recommend python, as the language is pretty simple, and with the interpreter you can just type in commands and when you hit enter they execute. Not so sure on creating a GUI with it though, there are a few ways - not sure which is most popular. the python WxWidget library is one i know of.

Python tutorial
Java tutorials

Both are relatively platform independent. Python has built in modules for reading/writing the windows registry, which can come in handy.
 
Last edited:
As PTNL suggested use VS Express, and maybe start with VB.NET and then move up to C# after you understand that basic logic of programming.
 
Yeah, Visual Studio would be your best bet. I work with Java for a living, but have never seen anything that matches the GUI quality of Visual Studio tools.
 
Orwick_Alefgard said:
Hey Everyone:

I have recently come into some spare time in the evenings and was toying with the idea of learning how to write a program I've been thinking about recently.

I have worked in the IT industry for 5 years, so I would not call myself technically unintelligent. On the flip-side, I have never done any development work (other than some simple batch files, which in my mind, don't count! :D ). I did take a programming class in college, but that was almost 10 years ago, so assume that I don't have any programming background.

My question is that I just don't know where to start. I mean, there are a million programming languages and a ton of IDE's, and they all proclaim to be the coolest thing since sliced bread.


So any suggestions?
  • I only want to code for windows.
  • I would prefer something that is easy/intermediate to pick up.
  • And not to sound anal, but I would like something that looks good. For instance, apparently the GUI stuff for Java is Swing and I think that is looks very unpolished. (I could just be showing my ignorance here, though...)
Anyway, if you have questions or need more detail, just let me know.

Thanks!

Orwick
Click to expand...
VB is your best bet. You'll have nice drag-n-drop WYSIWYG, which should make things pretty easy.
 
Umm.. this might sound stupid. But check out Autoit. Its actually how I first started to program back in Jr High. Out of college now, and am really good at what I do. Start small, get the basic ideas down, then learn a little more at a time. Java (dont really recommend learning it before C), C, then move on to other stuff.

You just need to get the basic idea of variables, loops, arrays, etc.
 
if you are that inexperienced, I think it would be best to not worry about GUIs right now and just nail down the basics of programming (oop, loops, data structures, etc) and just the mindset of how to programmaticly solve problems
 
eon said:
if you are that inexperienced, I think it would be best to not worry about GUIs right now and just nail down the basics of programming (oop, loops, data structures, etc) and just the mindset of how to programmaticly solve problems
Click to expand...
In reference to Visual Studio, I doubt "drag and drop controls" would hinder the OP's tinkering and education about loops, conditional statements, and data types.
 
PTNL said:
In reference to Visual Studio, I doubt "drag and drop controls" would hinder the OP's tinkering and education about loops, conditional statements, and data types.
Click to expand...

Having a GUI might actually make it easier for him to come up with projects to work on at home, where he might have a difficult time coming up with command line programs he'd actually enjoy creating.
 
python is a very nice language to write and read (being almost self-documenting)
*IF* you can stand white-spaces being part of the syntax
 
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