dchishaggy

Well I’m new to programming. I have done some basic VB with Excel and Fortran way back in college. My goal is to build a few applications that will help with automated data collection and processing. I could probably do this with Access or even Excel, but I would like 1) to make something that is standalone and 2) learn a new skill.
I have the Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition from Microsoft. So my big question is what should I start with VB, C++, C#? Also once I pick my poison, other then this forum, where is a good place to learn?

Thanks for your advice

TFL Replica

I'll recommend that you start with C# as it's powerful and yet easy to learn. Also you can use Microsoft SQL server for the database.

One of your best places for help would be MSDN. It's a very rich resource for all sorts of programming information.

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dharmaBum

VB.NET is somewhat more similar in syntax to FORTRAN than C#.NET, although the whole ".NET" thing is more or less the same code (it all becomes common-code before compilation anyway).

For .NET it doesn't much matter; the big point is learning how to use all the .NET libraries. It's a good primer to programming if you're willing to get used to crawling over lots of MSDN pages reading member functions.

C++ is quirky and really only advantageous to experienced developers, but easy enough to pick up and use for anybody; it's just there's not much the novice can do in C++ than they can't do in something like C# (and a good chance of screwing things up).

SQL's a solid data backend and being from MS also there's some really solid integration with .NET, although it handles Access, XML, or Excel just as well (in fact through the same class interface as SQL). The Visual Studio GUI can more or less automate this functionality for you, in fact, and auto-produce some solid code.

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