Boss wants me to program

[Adriaan Renting]

Visual Basic is a good option for small programs on Windows. It does
cost a lot of money depending on your needs. It's not a good choice for
large programs (or at least used to be). The older versions of VC++ are
very hard and difficult, the newer versions seem to be o.k. I used to
prefer Borland C++Builder for large Windows projects.

Both Java and C++ are very complex languages, they wouldn't be my first
choice to learn programming basics.

Python is especially nice if you are using Some Unix environment. I like
how it interoperates with Qt for designing user interfaces. It's free
too, but for Windows you might need to wait for Qt version 4 to be able
to create User Interfaces o Windows. I like the Eric3 program to develop
my applications.

As to the actual programming:
Writing the documentation, helpfiles and maintaining the application is
what will take most of the time, not the actual writing itself.

Here are some sites that might have some useful hints for creating easy
to use applications:
"http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html"
"http://www.nngroup.com/" "http://www.rha.com/ui_hall_of_shame.htm"
"http://digilander.libero.it/chiediloapippo/Engineering/iarchitect/shame.htm"
"http://www.pixelcentric.net/x-shame/"
"http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html"

Adriaan Renting        | Email: renting at astron.nl
ASTRON                 | Phone: +31 521 595 217
P.O. Box 2             | GSM:   +31 6 24 25 17 28
NL-7990 AA Dwingeloo   | FAX:   +31 521 597 332
The Netherlands        | Web: http://www.astron.nl/~renting/
>>> Cyril BAZIN <cyril.bazin at gmail.com> 06/28/05 11:25 AM >>>
Hello,

If you have enough money to buy a licence, Visual Basic seem a very good

option.
(But you should learn how to use design patterns.)

Without knowing this language I was able to perform a graphical user 
interface to 
interact with an automat, a mySQL database and many analogical sensors
in 
less 
than 1 month. 

Cyril


On 27 Jun 2005 11:51:21 -0700, xeys_00 at yahoo.com <xeys_00 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> 
> I'm a manager where I work(one of the cogs in a food service company).
> The boss needed one of us to become the "tech guy", and part of that
is
> writing small windows programs for the office. He wants the
development
> work done in house, and he knows I am in school for a CS minor. I know
> basic C++(Part 2 of that is in the fall), and I will be taking Java 1
> in the fall also. What is the easiest way for me to make windows
> programs that will do basic things like(Inventory, Menu Management,
> etc...)? I have heard visual basic is where it's at. I want to keep an
> open mind though, so I am wondering if python could be an option. The
> programs have
> no speed requirement. But they must be pretty, and not confuse my
> boss. Plus he wants well documented help for each function. I asked
the
> windows programming group, but I thought I would ask here also.
Thanks.
> 
> Xeys
> 
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>