What to develop next? ("Ideas Wanted")

[bommel]

Huh. Didn't know they were that similar...nice to know

AFAIK one of the Java designers helped designing C#

But I'm talking about syntax, not necessarily semantics. Of course Java and .Net doesn't share the same code base. THerefore you still have different classes, functions, etc. in each language but they are still very similar

[Swoka Ikran]

Huh. Didn't know they were that similar...nice to know

AFAIK one of the Java designers helped designing C#

That explains it...

But I'm talking about syntax, not necessarily semantics. Of course Java and .Net doesn't share the same code base. THerefore you still have different classes, functions, etc. in each language but they are still very similar

Kinda figured you were...functions/classes/etc. are rarely the same across languages, especially when they were developed by different companies.

A lot of my Autoit skills came in useful when I learned PHP (somewhat similar syntax and many of the same features/behaviors), but I still find myself getting function names and arguments mixed up.

[Sіr. Ηaxalot]

AFAIK Mono currently fully supports .Net 2.0. But I haven't worked with it yet. I do .Net development only on Windows.

Good to hear.

In my opinion a good starting point is either Java or C# if you're new to programming. C++ as a first language can be quite frustrating...

Someone I know (more like knew, haven't talked to him almost a year) uses C#.

If I compare code from C# and VB.NET: http://www.harding.edu/fmccown/vbnet_csharp_comparison.html

VB.NET seems to be simpler than C#, not to mention VB.NET is a lot prettier IMO.

Afaik Mono have support for almost everything except WPF (which is a shame. WPF is really nice once you learn it). If you stay to Windows Forms, which is an older API but still better than AutoIt, you should do fairly well when it comes to cross compability.

IMO C# is alot prettier than VB.NET VB.NET is also a bit slower for some reason, but it's nothing to worry about unless you write really intense applications that does alot of claculations, like games. (This might be part reason why VB.NET isn't supported in XNA afaik.)

[Swoka Ikran]

Afaik Mono have support for almost everything except WPF (which is a shame. WPF is really nice once you learn it). If you stay to Windows Forms, which is an older API but still better than AutoIt, you should do fairly well when it comes to cross compability.

OK. Will have to look into Windows Forms...

VB.NET is also a bit slower for some reason, but it's nothing to worry about unless you write really intense applications that does alot of claculations, like games.

I don't think I'll be doing much in the way of game development. Even if I was, I won't be doing any useful development in VB.NET anytime soon (gotta learn VB.NET before I can make something worth publishing)...

If I ever become good at VB.NET, my new apps will be made in it.

As for Avatray, I'm just gonna keep it in AutoIt since AutoIt doesn't port well to anything (and the core menu lib has no non-AutoIt version). I did a little testing, and I can reuse my SoL lesson converter code to handle the XML for a desktop news feed.

Now I just need to write code to remove HTML from topic data, and find a usable data source...I tried RSS from the News forum here a while back...in SMF's "standard format", entries change order based on replies. SMF's "News" format RSS feed gave me topics that were long dead.