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I Want to Make My Own Frontend, Help

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Howard_Casto:

--- Quote from: loadman on May 04, 2006, 08:48:39 pm ---I am just learning programming (if you don't count my Commodore 64 back in the 80's) and I am using VB .net.

The olny reason I choose that is a few friends use it so I can bounch ideas of them.

I intend to make a very simple front-end for my own education

--- End quote ---


That seems like a nice choice, especially if you have actual people you can ask questions. 

Personally I hate the .net language like a passion especially vb.net.  However, I'm not stupid enough not to realize that .net is the future and it's a good choice if you want what you are learning to be useful in the future. 


I guess that has to to with the advice we are giving you hayan.  Are you wanting just to build a fe and that's it or are you really trying to learn how to code?

lokki:

--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on May 04, 2006, 02:41:57 pm ---
--- Quote from: youki on May 04, 2006, 03:52:52 am ---Hi,

I think it is a good idea to start programming by trying to do a Front End.

Because a simple Front End is very easy to do . And it is something you can make evoluate easily.

Except Howard who seems to have great difficulty to make a Front end ...  ;)  it something very easy in comparaison of all thing you could do by programing.  (Howard don't be offense , it is just a joke  ;)).

Personnaly , i hate Visual Basic.   I had to deal with it in my professional life numerous times  on lot of project of all type. And for me it is a bad tool.  DELPHI is incredibly better and even more easier than Visual Basic.  That 's just my point of view based on my own experience.  Just a question of taste. I hate to be limited by a tool.



--- End quote ---


Yes a simple front end is quite easy to do.  A simple front-end is also quite useless. 

In order for a front-end to at least be functional it requires the loading of pngs, the parsing of mame's crazy, often illogical, list formats, hierarchial searching (for multiple rom paths and clone/parent relationships for artwork) and the good old "shellandwait" command. 

So you are suggesting that for a person with absolutely zero coding experience, learning how to use external dlls, the windows api and advanced text manipulation all in one project is a nice, simple first project?  I think someone has lost touch with the non-programmer.


For the record delphi and vb are virtually the same language.  If anything you can do more with vb than you can with delphi as delphi is a not offically a m$ language but that's just my opinion.   The problem with delphi is its' what I call a "false" language, as are many of the languages you guys have mentioned.  It doesn't use coding syntax, and rather relies on a bunch of pre-defined functions.  Which is great if you want to get things done, but bad if you are trying to teach yourself how to porgram as it's doing things automatically that will require a bit of heavy lifting in other languages.  Also there aren't as many delphi examples out there as one would like.  That goes for a lot of the languages mentioned so far. 
pular/new nobody has done it yet.

--- End quote ---

OK for the record it has been a few years since I have used Delphi (last version I used was 4.0 but I used 2 and 3 for a couple of years) But i can't belive you are calling it a false language. it is a fully object oriented programming Language.

It is a very good beginner programming language (based on Object Pascal).  People usually compara Delphi with VB. but Delphi was a fullblown development environment before VB was ever a serious development language (I would say around vb 6). Unfortuntaly VB has grown and delphi pretty much remained where it was.

Also Anders Hejlsberg who was one of the architects of Delphi and is now the main C# architect. And some of the features of Delphi have been adopted by C#.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

False language is a little harsh. It is not a very popular language. So you are right that there is not as much online information on it. But it does a tight loyal fan community. But it is a very good beginner language. I would say it is a better beginner language thatn VB. Mainly because it is a little stricter than VB. I have serious issues with VB (I still have been using it regularly for the past year or so). But my main issues is not that VB is bad. My main problem is that VB does not penalize bad programming practices. (A good VB programmer can write great programs in VB, but a Bad programmer can write awful programs) . Not sure if this makes sense...






Howard_Casto:
It makes sense, but that's the very reason I reccomended vb.  Unlike the others you program isn't going to crash and burn if you say, forget to predefine a variable.  It keeps beginners from getting frustrated that nothing works when they are really making minor mistakes that don't effect the functionality of the program anyway.  Oh and there's "on error resume next"  all bow down to "on error resume next".

Pi:
I have to add my own opinion about Delphi. Delphi is, contrary to the old VB, fully OOP from the beginning. It uses strict syntax (not loose like VB) with very powerful twists, and you can do way more things with Delphi than with VB. Like writing your own components in a breeze. All Delphi components are written actually in Delphi, and you can get the source, and expand them as you want. And it's FAST. The Delphi compiling technology is as good as any C compiler. I've used Delphi since 3.0, I've been using Delphi 7 lately and I'm greatly pleased. Pascal was always my favorite language, but Delphi is much, much better.

Also remember that Delphi is just a product. The language is Object Pascal, and there are free compilers available, a great community, lots of tools and components for it, and it can be used to write cross-platform code quite easily, either if you go thru the "official" course with Kylix, or use any of the free compilers.

The only gripe people have about Delphi is that the human-like syntax makes it look like a too-high level language. Pascal was also developed as a learning language. And that is also one of its good things. You can write complex code and one year later you can read it and understand instantly what it does. But that doesn't mean you can't do low-level stuff easily. And that is one of the big differences it has with VB. I find VB quite limited, but Delphi isn't.

I also consider Delphi a very good first language, specially with the free tutorials available for it.

However, all this is just my opinion. Others will pest or praise at C, or at Java, or at VB, Fortran, Cobol, whatever.... As always ::)

Space Fractal:
I have seen a lots of great Delphi applications (but I have not tried Delphi), and it may only require one runtime files.

Otherwice all language have god and bad points (even when I recommed  Blitz+ and/or Purebasic, Blitz+ can been too simple, but like its speed).

It the same as Linux VS Windows thing.....


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