Which programming language should I use?

[Frankz]

I've been thinking about making a program for personal use. But I don't really know where to start or which programming language I should learn & use to build it.

Program functions;
-Upon executing this program, it'll open 2 other programs
-Both of those programs will be linked/connected/attached to eachother, so when moving one, the other moves with it.
-Both programs will automaticly be resized so they have the same width as eachother and a fixed length for each individually
-When resizing the width of one, the width of the other program will also change.
-I want to be able to control the program through a system tray icon where I can activate/deactivate certain functions.
-Should be compatible with W8.1 & W10.

I know there are probably several different languages I could build this program with but I'd like some suggestions from you guys.

Which programming languages can I use to build something like this?
And
Which programming languages would be best to use?

Thanks in advance,
Frankzz

 

[Blupig]

If you're only targeting Windows, then absolutely hands-down C# or VB.NET. You'd use Windows' message API to pipe info from one program to the other, and the rest is super simple because of Winforms and WPF. For the least amount of work and for what you want accomplished, those are absolutely your best options.

You're going to get a whole lot of different replies in this thread, I promise you that, but out of all the languages I know and all my years of experience I am telling you that C# or VB.NET are your best options.

I would only consider something else if you wanted it to work on multiple platforms. If that's the case I'd look at probably either Java or Python with Qt (C++ would also become a viable option with Qt). C is also lovely to work with when piping, but is an absolute nightmare for visual GUI stuff.

So again, C# or VB. All the fuckin' way.

 

[Frankz]

If you're only targeting Windows, then absolutely hands-down C# or VB.NET. You'd use Windows' message API to pipe info from one program to the other, and the rest is super simple because of Winforms and WPF. For the least amount of work and for what you want accomplished, those are absolutely your best options.

You're going to get a whole lot of different replies in this thread, I promise you that, but out of all the languages I know and all my years of experience I am telling you that C# or VB.NET are your best options.

I would only consider something else if you wanted it to work on multiple platforms. If that's the case I'd look at probably either Java or Python with Qt (C++ would also become a viable option with Qt). C is also lovely to work with when piping, but is an absolute nightmare for visual GUI stuff.

So again, C# or VB. All the fuckin' way.

Thanks I've been looking into C#, there's so much to learn lol, I think it'll take a while before I'm actually able to use the "code" that I need to create the program I want

 

[Blupig]

Thanks I've been looking into C#, there's so much to learn lol, I think it'll take a while before I'm actually able to use the "code" that I need to create the program I want

Start small but always have that project idea in mind. The first thing I ever made was a l33t speak translator. Didn't know how to program, but always worked with that goal in mind. Learned a lot just on that little project.

 

[Minted]

I agree with Bluepig:

I recommend learning Visual Basic.NET first as it's syntactically more basic than C#.NET. If you know VB.NET, you're likely to learn C# very easily as it uses the same libraries and classes as in C#. Although this is a huge generalization: C#'s essentially VB.NET with a load of squiggly brackets, semi-colons, case-sensitivity and static classes.

Also, I'm sure Bluepig already knows this, but you can get C# applications to run in their non-native environment - Linux. Although not entirely straight-forward, you can run a C# application with Mono on Linux. Just as in Windows, it's still not entirely stand-alone, therefore. (search: mkbundle)

Also, at your stage, stay right away from C and C++ - they're much lower-level languages and require 10x the amount of work as would have been needed if programming something in VB.NET/C#.NET.

Good luck!