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I'm doing work in Quickbooks and Excel and Word and every other damn program out there while at work... I need a way to easily do what I want to do. I can write a DOS program to do what I want to do, because I know basic C++ functions and can read a help file. Took some classes on it, been programming muds (in C) for years, now I need to find out what someone thinks I should do.



I want to be able to write a Windows program with like, windows, instead of dos. I know Nightmare is done up in VB. What do you think I should try to write it in? I'm clueless beyond the dos shit, so I don't even know what language to start off in or what developers program to use. I've got Borland C++ BuilderX Enterprise, but I don't even compile my programs in it... I just upload it to a linux shell. Anyone have any suggestions? I really don't want to have to learn a whole new language, I'd like to keep learning C++, so if someone could point me in the right direction it'd be appreciated.

I'm doing work in Quickbooks and Excel and Word and every other damn program out there while at work... I need a way to easily do what I want to do. I can write a DOS program to do what I want to do, because I know basic C++ functions and can read a help file. Took some classes on it, been programming muds (in C) for years, now I need to find out what someone thinks I should do.



I want to be able to write a Windows program with like, windows, instead of dos. I know Nightmare is done up in VB. What do you think I should try to write it in? I'm clueless beyond the dos shit, so I don't even know what language to start off in or what developers program to use. I've got Borland C++ BuilderX Enterprise, but I don't even compile my programs in it... I just upload it to a linux shell. Anyone have any suggestions? I really don't want to have to learn a whole new language, I'd like to keep learning C++, so if someone could point me in the right direction it'd be appreciated.

i find programming languages to be very similar. if you know C you can probably pick up any other language in just a few hours, with the exception of maybe ASM. i thought myself PHP in less than a day after knowing VB. syntax is really the only difference. the whole concept is the same. the big difference going from a DOS language to windows one would just be the object oriented part of it (referencing the window objects and the objects on the windows). i would just get ahold of visual studio .NET or visual studio 6 and fart around in visual C++. check out some of the sample projects and see what is familiar.

Jumping from DOS to Windows programming is a real big jump. VB makes it really easy since you don't handle all of the "behind the scenes" windows programming. It's a good thing to learn for quick jobs but if you want something more valuable, you'll have to learn how to use the windows API.



Learning (C++) syntax is the easy part. You have to learn the concepts behind how Windows programs are written. It takes A LOT of code to write a simple Windows APP. Most of the code are calls to the Windows API. VB is simple because it masks these calls.



So the question is are you really up for the learning or do you just want to write windows apps with minimal time invested...

I went to school for a year for programming and plan to be back in school within eight months for the same, I'm definitely in it for the learning as much as anything else. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

the industry standard for windows programming in c++ is ms vs.net latest version. if you're going for a c++ developer job, i wouldn't risk going in there saying you don't know how to use that IDE