Trying to program something....?

Question

Heres the deal. i dont know what im doing. i like programming, and im trying actively to learn. i know very little, but enough, about visual basic. and i used to write bat scripts (most of the time pranks or diag tools for my own use) but thats all i know. now i want to make a sort of "notification catcher" for a site i frequent that is terribly undervisited. (Frostgamers.net) and i was wondering how i would go about this! im MORE then willing to learn, in fact, i want to learn for more then this. this is just my motivational project. so i need to know....
1. what software/coding method should i use? where can i get this software?
2. are there any tutorials out for it? anyway i can learn? (if your willing to mentor me, then ill be more then happy to try my best to be a good student.)
3. How would i go about tethering the program to the site? in the aspect of linking the logins? and taking the data from the forum feed, and what not? is there a way to put HTML in a script/exe to run?

Thanks for reading. im more then willing to learn, but i dont know where to start this time.....

Answer 1

@1: Use a programming language. If you're new to programming, I suggest learning either a procedural language (like C) or a functional language (like Lisp).

@2: Read SICP or K&R2.

@3: What you're asking sounds fairly vague, but you can use libcurl to download pages from HTTP.



http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/

Answer 2

Considering that you are (somewhat) familiar with VB, I suggest that you download MS Visual Studio 2010 Express (it is free). There are several versions for different programming languages, take the VB one. This code editor program makes learning a lot easier, with its "intellisense" functionality, that will offer possible options while you write, and autofill that will write out common expressions for you.

In short, it is easy to use, easy to learn, and you will be programming faster than you can say "Bill Gates"



Visual Studio includes some simple tutorials, and the internet is full of them as well. Just search for "free vb.net tutorials", and you will get plenty of material.

Also any more specific programming questions you can get plenty answers too by prefixing your internet search with "vb.net".

A helpful forum for programming questions is www.codeproject.com. They offer sub forums for most all .net languages, and then some.



Once you get some of the simpler basics down, just start asking your other questions separately.

Answer 3

While there are many ways to do this, I know libcurl could easily do this. http://curl.haxx.se/



They even have a VB binding for libcurl http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/vb/

Answer 4

look up google analytics this will do this job for you aleady