Best programming language for...

[devWhiz]

Making a program that has a GUI and text fields, buttons, and such that would automate things on facebook and myspace, in example, logging in and accepting friend requests on multiple accounts and stuff like that, so It would have to be able to interact with websites such as facebook and myspace as mentioned, what do you think would be the best for this? I would like to learn something that I could possibly make a living with it as well, selling programs.. I was thinking of VB.net, My buddy says that vb.net is the most powerful programming language out right now, and it is still being developed.. growing fast..he keeps suggesting vb.net, What do you guys suggest?

 

btw I usually write scripts to automate facebook and myspace tasks but I want something with a GUI, does vb.net have an alternative to cURL? I use cURL for the login process of the accounts..

 

Here is an example of something I would like to be able to write..

 

 

and

 

 

Idk, My buddy just swears by vb.net.. says it is the most powerful programming language today, one reason he said vb.net was better than c++ was because vb.net is still being developed as c++ is not.. What do you guys think about this?

 

Thanks

 

[KevinM1]

The .NET languages and C++ aim to do different things, so a direct comparison isn't really applicable, or even necessary.  Also, a language being constantly refined isn't necessarily an indication of anything.  ANSI C hasn't been touched in forever, but I doubt you'll hear anyone say it's a bad or incomplete language.  Finally the word 'powerful' is really meaningless when it comes to things like this.  Programming has never been an exercise in power, but in capability.  It's always about "Can I do X with this language?  If so, how easy will it be to do X?"  Since .NET is a managed platform, it's actually less capable with some things, most notably where dynamic memory comes into play.  Pointers exist, but are turned off by default, and it requires some coaxing in order to get them to work correctly.

 

If you're going to look at a .NET language, look at C#.  VB doesn't have the support your friend suggests.  It's kept up-to-date mostly because of coders who jumped on board during the old VB 6 days, and the schools that keep churning out entry level programmers (thank you, India).  C# is what Microsoft has hitched its wagon to.  It's the default back end language for ASP.NET, Silverlight/WPF (which includes Windows Phone 7 apps), and XNA games.  It also has a syntax you'll be more comfortable with as it's a C-style language, like PHP.  VB's syntax is utterly horrible.

 

What would you rather write and read:

 

sub HelloWorld(ByVal name As String, ByRef count As Integer)
   Console.WriteLine("Hello" & name & "!")
   count += 1
end sub

Dim helloCount As Integer = 0
Dim name As String = "Bob"

HelloWorld(name, helloCount)

 

Or:

 

void HelloWorld(String name, ref int count)
{
   Console.WriteLine("Hello" + name + "!");
   count++;
}

int helloCount = 0;
String name = "Bob";

HelloWorld(name, ref helloCount);

[devWhiz]

The second code looks somewhat similar to php in my opinion, thats c# right? what is the first one? vb? also can you point me in the right direction to learn some C#? Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me, I've had 20 people try and youre repsonse was the best, thanks again

[KevinM1]

The second code looks somewhat similar to php in my opinion, thats c# right? what is the first one? vb?

 

Correct.  The first example is VB, the second is C#.

 

also can you point me in the right direction to learn some C#? Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me, I've had 20 people try and youre repsonse was the best, thanks again

 

This is a link to the official documentation for the latest version of the language: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/67ef8sbd.aspx  That said, MSDN documentation is kind of crappy, so your best bet is a book.  The best I've found is C# 4.0 in a Nutshell: http://www.amazon.com/C-4-0-Nutshell-Definitive-Reference/dp/0596800959/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305307685&sr=8-1 

 

The book is the entire C# language and the core .NET libraries.  For more specific things (like, say, web development with ASP.NET MVC) you'll need additional resources.  Part of the appeal of the .NET framework is that it's very modular.  You have the core libraries, which pretty much everyone needs to use for basic things, and then specific libraries based on what you actually want to do.  The downside to that modularity is complexity.  It can be daunting to learn exactly what you need to include and how to use it properly in your project. 

 

I'm not sure what you'd need to focus on for GUI creation.  If your friend makes GUI's, simply use the namespaces he uses.  That's another benefit of .NET - all of the languages have access to the same libraries, and, even better, all of the languages are first compiled to an intermediate language before being compiled to an executable.  So, if set up properly, you could have VB, C#, and even F# (Microsoft's functional language) all within your project at the same time.

 

In order to compile your code, you'll need one of the Visual Studio IDE's.  Thankfully, Microsoft has a free, somewhat nerfed version: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/

 

Beyond that, just do the usual - hang out on the MSDN forums and Stack Overflow.  You'll see a lot of code, and you'll be able to get answers to your specific questions.

[devWhiz]

Yeah, visual studio is what a buddy of mine uses to make a shell for his php scripts to protect the code, Do you think I could make a good living knowing C#, I want to go to college for network administration and to become a programmer..

 

what should I look into the prepare?

 

Thanks

[KevinM1]

Yeah, visual studio is what a buddy of mine uses to make a shell for his php scripts to protect the code, Do you think I could make a good living knowing C#, I want to go to college for network administration and to become a programmer..

 

what should I look into the prepare?

 

Thanks

 

Yes, you can make a good living with C#.  That said, C# isn't used often for generic application programming.  Like I said earlier, it's used for things like ASP.NET web development, Silverlight/WPF development, which includes Windows Phone 7 apps, and XBox Live Indie Games with the XNA studio.  Full-fledged desktop apps are still generally written in C or C++.

 

The real question is what kind of programming do you want to do?

[markjoe]

Nearly everything discussed here

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=332066.msg1562945#msg1562945

still applies.

Python, Ruby and Perl all have GUI toolkits available to them. I believe you can even do it with php.

Of course a GUI desktop app is better off in Java or C#, I think, rather than any of the above.