Need Help...to learn a programming language

Thread Starter

Sleve Hope

Joined Apr 21, 2020
11
Hi

I want to learn a programming language that relate to PC. My goal is to learn more about Windows, so the best way is to learn how to write programs relate to Windows, using Windows. I want to know what language to learn and how to go by it.

I learned Assembly, Basic and Pascal before and did some programming too. Then, my interest and career was more in analog and RF electronics. Now that I am free, I just want to catch up on programming and learn more about Windows.

Please advice me what language to learn and what is the best approach to achieve this.

Thanks
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
Depends on what you are trying to do -- programs that relate to Windows is a pretty broad category.

If you want to write programs that run on the Windows platform, then there are a whole lot of options. I'm assuming that you aren't talking about console programs, but rather GUI programs. Lots of languages provide all kinds of support for writing GUI applications that run on Windows. Most of the languages supported by Visual Studio and/or the .NET framework, plus a host of others include Java and Python plus probably dozens of others.

If you really want to dig under the hood and understand Window programming, then perhaps one of the most thorough ways to do that is to do it in C using the Windows API (formerly the Win32 API). There's a very good book by Charles Petzold called Programming Windows. He is an excellent writer.

Be careful how you read it though, as it's a huge book; I wasn't and ended up with a broken rib as a result.
 

MrSoftware

Joined Oct 29, 2013
2,188
There are tons of choices. If you want to write low level code such as drivers check out C and C++. If you want to write GUI code, C# would be my personal choice. You can absolutely write GUI code in C or C++ or any of a number of other languages, but IMHO C# has excellent Windows support and would be a good way to go for Windows GUI code. Microsoft Visual Studio is the perfect IDE to use for either of these under Windows. But that said, you can write windows programs in any number of different languages. For example I was writing GUI code in C# last week, and doing some image manipulation in Python at the moment. It depends on what your goals are and which language supports your goals the best.
 

402DF855

Joined Feb 9, 2013
271
My recommendation: Visual Studio, C++, unmanaged, MFC. Both console and GUI apps are supported; for the latter be sure to select "Dialog based" rather than "Multiple Documents" which unfortunately is the default in the App Wizard. And is useless IMO.

C# used to be workable, but over the last few years Microsoft has "improved" it and you'll spend more time writing XML than C#.

Since you mention BASIC experience, consider Visual Basic in Visual Studio.
 

MrSoftware

Joined Oct 29, 2013
2,188
My recommendation: Visual Studio, C++, unmanaged, MFC. Both console and GUI apps are supported; for the latter be sure to select "Dialog based" rather than "Multiple Documents" which unfortunately is the default in the App Wizard. And is useless IMO.

C# used to be workable, but over the last few years Microsoft has "improved" it and you'll spend more time writing XML than C#.

Since you mention BASIC experience, consider Visual Basic in Visual Studio.
The xaml actually makes lots of the GUI work easier, but it does take time to learn it. Especially if you go the MVVM route, which has its own list of pros and cons. There are some excellent videos on YouTube. I'm far from a GUI whiz and had to figure out MVVM with C# a few weeks ago, and a few hours on YouTube was well worth the time. You can still write your GUI code without xaml, and you can still create windows forms apps in C# if that's what you want to do.
 

BobaMosfet

Joined Jul 1, 2009
2,110
Hi

I want to learn a programming language that relate to PC. My goal is to learn more about Windows, so the best way is to learn how to write programs relate to Windows, using Windows. I want to know what language to learn and how to go by it.

I learned Assembly, Basic and Pascal before and did some programming too. Then, my interest and career was more in analog and RF electronics. Now that I am free, I just want to catch up on programming and learn more about Windows.

Please advice me what language to learn and what is the best approach to achieve this.

Thanks
Start reading- like we all did, and practice:

Programming Windows 5th Ed.
Author: Charles Petzold
ISBN-13: 978-1572319950
ISBN-10: 157231995X
 
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