I am familiar with programming. Though I remember very little of the syntax, I certainly have not forgotten how to properly analyze and organize the flow of code-- or in other words, how to think like a machine.
Still, OOP was completely foreign to me before starting this adventure-- but I have also realized that it is not entirely different to writing good segmented VB code in which I would create procedures to call upon and return results-- I just didn't know to call it OOP back then.
I have heard some people say that OOP takes a considerable knowledge of proper coding to utilize fully, which maybe is beyond me at this point, but if you were to step outside of your multilingual box and decide it was time to learn programming, would you start with OOP or something like Python/Ruby?
Let me put all of this into perspective a little bit and maybe you or someone else can get me pointed in the right direction:
One of my immediate needs/desires is a scheduler. I am fine with a command line program that simply outputs the details of a database that I maintain. I'm good with that. What I need is a lightweight piece of software that simply allows me to input Date/Time and maybe some notes and then allow me to manipulate that date to provide alerts or notices on a schedule I define for each task. Now, this may sound like reinventing the wheel, but honestly I hate the way traditional schedulers work and I'd like to just take a crack at it myself. I also think this would be a relatively light and easy first project for my welcome back to programming.
This "database" could be a simple tab-delimited text file that my software imports and parses-- in fact, I am quite fond of ETCs. This would also mean I could keep this "database" up to date across several machines using various OSes via Dropbox even. I would like for this software to work on both Windows and Linux as I am regularly in both systems-- and ultimately my phone if at all possible.
Now, I really do appreciate the help and I sincerely thank you for following along this far and reading all this gibberish-- but what would you fire up to write something like that? I am, after all, a lifetime learner and I have no problems learning multiple languages. I've got the time. :)
You can do OOP in VB. It is almost proper OOP: the only thing not supported is real inheritance. So for every method in your child class you have to write some boilerplate to make a call to the parent.
As a side note, there was a really awesome book I read back when VB6 was still new. It's called Hardcore Visual Basic, and it is about how to do things that were said to be impossible in VB. Using the undocumented VarPtr functions, calling Windows API, etc. It is out of print (obviously), but available online at http://vb.mvps.org/hardweb/
That page mourns the late VB6. It is right: VB.Net is an entirely different language. I don't even know where you'd get a copy of old school VB these days (though VBA in Office is quite similar). Anyway, VB6 is dead, so you are probably interested in moving on to something modern.
The nice thing about Python is exactly that everyone keeps going on about how awesome it is :) What this means for you is that people have written some really good libraries. Many of them are in the standard distribution and are well-documented. This is what Python people mean by "batteries included".
As for what I'd use for this app... Not sure. I haven't written anything GUI-heavy in a long time. With Java I usually hand-code the GUI, but there might be good visual editors these days. For Python there is an IDE called Boa Constructor which lets you build GUIs. I have not tried it though.
I am familiar with programming. Though I remember very little of the syntax, I certainly have not forgotten how to properly analyze and organize the flow of code-- or in other words, how to think like a machine.
Still, OOP was completely foreign to me before starting this adventure-- but I have also realized that it is not entirely different to writing good segmented VB code in which I would create procedures to call upon and return results-- I just didn't know to call it OOP back then.
I have heard some people say that OOP takes a considerable knowledge of proper coding to utilize fully, which maybe is beyond me at this point, but if you were to step outside of your multilingual box and decide it was time to learn programming, would you start with OOP or something like Python/Ruby?
Let me put all of this into perspective a little bit and maybe you or someone else can get me pointed in the right direction:
One of my immediate needs/desires is a scheduler. I am fine with a command line program that simply outputs the details of a database that I maintain. I'm good with that. What I need is a lightweight piece of software that simply allows me to input Date/Time and maybe some notes and then allow me to manipulate that date to provide alerts or notices on a schedule I define for each task. Now, this may sound like reinventing the wheel, but honestly I hate the way traditional schedulers work and I'd like to just take a crack at it myself. I also think this would be a relatively light and easy first project for my welcome back to programming.
This "database" could be a simple tab-delimited text file that my software imports and parses-- in fact, I am quite fond of ETCs. This would also mean I could keep this "database" up to date across several machines using various OSes via Dropbox even. I would like for this software to work on both Windows and Linux as I am regularly in both systems-- and ultimately my phone if at all possible.
Now, I really do appreciate the help and I sincerely thank you for following along this far and reading all this gibberish-- but what would you fire up to write something like that? I am, after all, a lifetime learner and I have no problems learning multiple languages. I've got the time. :)