Change in direction for me.

[Story]

Hey all.

I'm a graphic designer and flash developer,
I work at a Digital Technologies company in sunny Cape Town, South Africa.

I'm looking for a change in direction,
tired or mocking up ideas, and letting someone else build them.

I really want to get into programming,
the nitty gritty,
make some of my design and ideas come alive.

My passion really sits with UI design.



I just got hold of the book,
"Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day"
One thing that gets me on quite a halt is that they do not suggest a C++ compiler,
and say that you can use any, which I am sure is the case.
But for a first "newbie" finding the right or a decent compiler is quite a daunting task.

I wondered if any of you could point me in the right direction.

I'll be doing most of my work on my notebook,
which is Windows 7 64bt Ultimate.

Thanks in advance,
hope I posted this in the right thread!

[hoxsiew]

VS2008 Express is free and should handle all the assignments in the Sams book. When you're ready to move on to GUI, you can get the VS2008 full version with a 90 day trial.

In short, stick with MS. Microsoft cranks out some real junky software packages, but visual studio is NOT one of them.

[John E]

I agree. I would recommend that you look at Microsoft Visual Studio and in particular, at .NET programming and C# generally. ,Net will help you to make the most of your previous experience with graphic design.

However, if your interest includes cross-platform programming you might be better considering gcc together with a cross-platform IDE, such as Code::Blocks.

Different peoples' opinions differ but for my money, the great strength of Visual Studio is its debugger. I've never found anything that even comes close to the power of a Microsoft debugger. But having said that, cross-platform development is almost a "must" these days and it would be a mistake to ignore it.

[Story]

Thanks for the responses.
Just grabbed VS2008,
let's power through this book,
and see how I am feeling from there.

Maybe programming just isn't for me =P


This might be another impossible question to answer,
but developing software like Skype,
VC++ is the right direction for that?

[hoxsiew]

In my opinion, yes. Some might argue that the .NET languages are coming of age (and I'll admit that Win7 seems to have better integrated support of the .NET framework and apps actually seem peppier; maybe it's just that I finally have a 64 bit OS on my 64 bit hardware) and C# is the way to go, but I find native apps more appealing, faster, more robust, and generally easier to work with. Also, with MFC9 all the fancy bells and whistles that many found appealing in .NET are available as native MFC controls.

[darwen]

My passion really sits with UI design.

Since you're a graphics designer have a look at Windows Presentation Foundation (it's a .NET 3.5 technology). It allows you to write vector-graphics designed UIs. It's really quite cool.

Download Expression Blend (which is the advanced UI editor - more geared to UI design rather than implementation, which is VS2008's forte) and have a play !

Darwen.

[Story]

Thanks all.
Imput really appreciated!

Since you're a graphics designer have a look at Windows Presentation Foundation (it's a .NET 3.5 technology). It allows you to write vector-graphics designed UIs. It's really quite cool.

Download Expression Blend (which is the advanced UI editor - more geared to UI design rather than implementation, which is VS2008's forte) and have a play !

Darwen.

That sounds line I plan.
Sunday will be dedicated to that.

[Story]

Darwen,

Could you perhaps suggest a book to work from?
As I don't have the greatest programming background, that seems like the best advance for me.

Looking at -

http://www.kalahari.net/page_templat...playShop=books

[darwen]

I haven't bought a book on WPF, however I was looking at "WPF In Action" (Arlen Feldman and Maxx Daymon, Manning Publications) and am considering buying it.

There's also "Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5" (Matthew MacDonald, APRESS) as well.

Darwen.

[Story]

Gonna follow through with the Sams series.

Sams.Teach.Yourself.WPF.in.24.Hours.Jun.2008

Briefly skimmed over it,
seem to start nice and simple and explain things well.

It also takes you through 8 chapters which are all geared towards followed tutorials at building a media player..

So looks like a good place to start,
and by the end of it should have a real taste at if this is the right place for me.


Thanks again to all the responses.

[Krishnaa]

WPF and Silverlight are good options for you.

[HanneSThEGreaT]

If you like UI design, you will love WPF!

You mentioned something about programming being not for you, I think everyone has felt like that at some point. When I started, it was very tough for me, now it's 10 years on, and each day is more exciting than the previous.

I'd also look into a very basic introduction to programming book if I were you, as some of the jargon you'll see, may not make much sense at all.

Good luck!

[Story]

Yeh,
thanks again ;p

I am working with a WPF book,
and an introduction to programming book.

One question,
can anybody link me to some examples of WPF produced applications/software?

[Story]

"Location: Vereeniging, South Africa"

Another South African,
good to meet you ;p

[HanneSThEGreaT]

Good to meet you too, although Cape Town is very very far from Vereeniging ( which is bordering on Sasolburg and 80 KM from Johannesburg )

Back to the point. Here are some sites with WPF samples :

http://windowsclient.net/downloads/f...s/default.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771449.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771633.aspx

http://blog.trivadis.com/blogs/manue...f-samples.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/wpfsdk/archive...e-gallery.aspx

http://www.sourcecodeonline.com/list?q=wpf_samples

http://www.brothersoft.com/downloads/wpf-samples.html

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/...f-samples.aspx

http://software.informer.com/getfree-wpf-samples/

http://wareseeker.com/free-wpf-samples/

I hope it helps you out