Which Language Should I Use?

[dilettante]

Thank you for your replies. I have Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 already. As VB is a more visual based language i just assumed it would be the best language for this app

Visual, you say...


I always find it hilarious that people from the Anybody But Microsoft ghetto of computing look at App Inventor and describe it as "Visual Basic."

MIT App Inventor

AppInventor.org: Democratizing App Building

The original Basic was meant as a tool to introduce Liberal Arts students to what computers were and what they can do for you back in the 1960s. App Inventor is targeted as a teaching and learning tool for people who don't plan to study programming in depth, using the power available today to take the idea a step further.

There is no coding at all. Instead it is based on interlinking different kinds of "blocks" in a jigsaw-puzzle-like manner and setting a few properties on each of them. The linkages between blocks sort of takes the place of method calls.

App Inventor is a visual language with a drag-and-drop interface. Here are some of the reasons that even non-technical people can program with it.

• No syntax -- The blocks language eliminates the need to remember and type code
• Everything is right in front of you -- The components and functions are organized into drawers. Just find, drag, and drop.
• Events at top level -- "When this happens, the app does this" is the correct conceptual model. Down with Listeners!
• High-level components -- The app inventor team has built a great library with simplicity the main goal.
• Only some blocks plug-in -- You can't do things that don't make sense.
• Concreteness -- You program components, not abstractions.

Of course there is an amazing degree of similarity with classic VB in one way: your program is a state machine driven by events.

Unlike VB there is no way to write paradigm-breaking procedural QBasic style code comprised of goofy things like long running loops with DoEvents() calls inside.


I doubt this is what you're after at all, but this thread does bring it to mind. You probably really do want to create a simple Web application instead of any kind of program. I don't see you reaching your intended audience as easily by making them install a program, have it pull down periodic database updates, etc. It can be done but by going the Web route you also reach non-Windows clients (and even Windows RT clients, which can barely use anything else).