I want to learn to develop stand alone Windows Desktop applications. Where should I start?

Question

I have been using the scripting language Autoit to make basic windows programs. After trying to create some more complex interfaces that can size labels and buttons on their own based on some font parameters, I'm pretty sure a different language would be able to create dynamic font interfaces more easily than a scripting language can. Autoit also suffers from poor performance, but that's expected.

I know C# or C++ is probably a good start toward learning an actual programming language, as far as better performance and multithreading is concerned, but what I'm most interested in is interface design. I'd like to eventually be able to develop a program that gives the user the option to set their font size. If this isn't possible, then I'll settle for designing variants of the same interface with different pre-set font sizes. I'd like a stand alone executable, not something that runs in a web browser or other container.

Any information concerning exactly what programming languages will be most helpful to learn to achieve this goal, resources to use to teach myself the languages, and programs I need to install on my computer to complete a program, such as compilers, will be appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Answer 1

Download the free "Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop" from Microsoft. That's the main development enviroement for general Windows applications.



In my opinion C# is the most versatile of the language options available, but coming from AutoIt, you may prefer Visual Basic instead.

In any case you can definetly write an application where the user chooses their font size.

Answer 2

200 videos on C#

http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=15



Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40787



(the express version of Visual Studio is free)



or go with the 2010 version

http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs#DownloadFamilies_4

Answer 3

You can use C++ and visual studio or Java and netbeans. Im sure there are other options but in my opinion these two would be the best. Netbeans is a free download so it costs nothing. You can get visual studio free but the free version is somewhat limited.



There are tons of resources on the web concerning both languages, but especially Java. I started doing java GUI's about a month ago after using C++ for almost 15 years and found the transition fairly painless. A quick search and I could find how to do everything I needed to do.

Answer 4

Though not a programming language as such, if you just want to design an interface to run some commands and functions a really good place to start for you might be PowerShell. It comes bundled with all Windows OS's from 7 upwards and you can download a a software package called PrimalCSV (Think it might be called PowerShell Studio now) which is kind of like Visual Studio but focusing on building GUI front ends for your PS scripts. I'm no programmer but I found it profoundly easy to use and I've used it to make several sysadmin tools for work.



http://www.sapien.com/software/powershell_studio



Not sure if you have to pay for it but there used to be a community edition you could download and use for free.