Bus Assignments

[Soulwraith56]

So, I am new to this site and programming in general (I know a beginners amount of knowledge in C, Java, and VB). I work as an Operations Supervisor for a large transit company and one of my tasks every night is assigning buses for the morning pullout. This job can be very time consuming and takes away from the time I can be using on other projects my role asks for. I was thinking about writing a program to help me with this and wanted your guys' opinions on what language would probably be best to go with and any input you may have.

So here are the details:
Every night I get a list of buses that are considered "down" (not usable) and those that are only aloud to run for a certain number of miles (100, 150, 175, and 200 miles) which we refer to as Mileage Holds. We also have "blocks" that pertain to one bus and the designated run(s) that the one bus travels on throughout the day. Each block is also assigned a certain bus type (there are about 7 different bus types we have here). If we do not have enough of the certain bus type for all the blocks, we put as many as we can on there then fill the rest of the blocks with random buses. What I would like the program to do is have a database with the bus types and what bus numbers are in that bus type. Then have the user input what buses are down and which ones are Mileage Holds, and have the program automatically assign buses to the proper runs based on mileage restrictions and bus types.

I was thinking this may be possible to do in VB, but I was also seeing that Python may be a smart choice too. I have nothing against learning Python or any other language if they may be better for what I am looking to do.

Thank you very much!

[Arjay]

I would be looking for a language that supports all aspects of the design. Presumably you'll need a front end, back end service and a database. You'll probably want a language that will allow you to code all three.

If you are a Microsoft stack guy, I would look into using C# .net Core. If an open source guy, I would look at Java. Not sure python would get it done for you.

By VB, are you referring to VB6 (released in 1998)? if so I wouldn't recommend starting a new project using a language that dated. If by VB, you mean VB.Net (the .Net VB equivalent of C#), then that would be fine.