How do you go about programming software? Help a total newbie!?

Question

I know absolutely nothing about programming. However I want to develop a software product to sell to businesses and schools. Can anyone tell me about easy programming software that will help me build an application? How long does it take to learn? And are there any free tutorials online? What kind of experts should I contact if I can't do it myself?

Answer 1

I'd look for a mentor (maybe a teacher) who is willing give you some time to help direct your studies. Today, web development is growing rapidly and could be a good entry point to this field. I'd think about starting with HTML to create basic web pages. From there you can go on to learn to use more sophisticated tools like Adobe Macromedia Flash. I'd learn the fundamentals before moving on.

Microsoft C# is an excellent language, but I'd suggest that you sign up for a community college or extension course.

Here is a link to a tutorial about HTML pages.
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

Good luck on achieving your goals. The world needs your talents.

Answer 2

Well all I can say to you is: good luck.

Trying to teach yourself a programming language enough so that you can develop software advanced enough to sell to companies or schools would take a good long time.

The best language to learn for small application building would probably be Visual Basic (shut-up all Linux lovers), since the syntax is very simple and it allows you to easily create a user-interface (GUI).

But, like I said, good luck with that because I gauruntee that any application you might make that you think is good enough to sell to someone:

A) it has most likely already been developed by a company and is much better and more advanced

B) that company can probably afford to sell it cheaper

C) someone probably has already released a free-ware version, since many applications today come in a free-ware/open source verison.

Answer 3

You need an ADE, (applicarion development environment) You can get visual basic or visual C++ here for free. This will create the GUI and compile the code.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

This is a long road you're starting on, so be prepared. I know there are videos about VB2005 somewhere online, but I can't remember right now. Search around and also get a programming manual.

Best of luck.

Answer 4

Start with the concept- "nothing is foolproof, fools are ingenious".
From that, make a description of EXACTLY what you want your product to do.
Then, break this down into a group of tasks. Find someone who is foolish (or a good simulation) to check a the ways someone might try to do something wrong.

What you have by now is the description of how your program should run. No matter WHAT way you want to program, this document is your "goal". You want something that work as much like your description as possible.

Good Luck ! Oh, and I'd suggest Java, if only because it works on all sorts of machines. Linux, windows, even Macs.

Answer 5

I recommend learning C, then C++ or Java. C will teach you imperative programming, and the latter will teach you the more advanced concepts of object-orientated programming.