Any suggestion for the fastest way to program a simple application

[depaul]

Hi guys,

I want to program a simple database application to manage my stocks. (I prefer to program it rather than download/buy a software)

I must admit I don't follow latest programming technologies news. I know there are many complex programming languages and IDE based on Java, and ASP .Net ...etc.

Do you guys know a fast way to create this? Some friends recommend me to use Windev but I have no idea!!

 

[Mazamin]

Php+Html would be great, as I made a simple database with it some months ago

 

[depaul]

Php+Html would be great, as I made a simple database with it some months ago

I will try that thanks. There are too many programming languages/technologies again I may try with Apache / Tomcat

 

[DriveSoft]

check out this video lesson

 

[spoonm]

Rather than jumping on learning a tool, I'd advise you to write down what you think you'll need for the program you're creating. Something like this:

• I need to keep track of data here and there. It has to be stored somewhere and read when I open the program.
• I'll need a way to pass commands into the program. Either a GUI or cli. If the latter, I will need a parser.
• The program will run on my computer and not on a server. OR the program will run on a server and I'll connect to it for usage. OR I will write both a server and a client.

You get the gist. Now, for starters, you can go read the sticky that covers programming, or do this: PHP and Python are both easy languages for you to start with. I'm much more fond of Python than I am of PHP, so I'd tell you to go with that.

If you need a database, get used to the concept and look for libraries on the programming language you chose(or even create your own). There's sqlite, there's ConfigParser/configparser(for ini's, not really databases, but they work), etc.

If you need a GUI, look up how to make simple GUIs with available libraries on your programming language of choice. For cli: get familiar with strings and start writing your parser.

You can host a database and a program on a remote server and use a web server to handle requests. If this is all you're going to do, I recommend lighttpd, as it is much lighter than Apache and nginx. Learn to configure it for usage with Python(or PHP, up to you), then:

• Write the script that will take care of requests.
• Make sure to write to stdin/echo/print out the page itself, as that's what's going to be sent to the client: that'll be your GUI. Sounds easier than learning how to use a library, right?
• Write or configure a database that your script will access, if you need to.
• Finally, if PHP: do your best to prevent XSS attacks. (The cause of XSS vulnerabilities is one of the reasons to hate PHP and call it disgusting.)

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Agreed on much of this, however instead of reinventing the wheel with your own view and model logic, I would instead recommend learning about a PHP framework like Symfony (better) or Laravel (simpler) which do much of the heavy lifting in terms of DB abstraction, componetisation and security.

 

[spoonm]

Agreed on much of this, however instead of reinventing the wheel with your own view and model logic, I would instead recommend learning about a PHP framework like Symfony (better) or Laravel (simpler) which do much of the heavy lifting in terms of DB abstraction, componetisation and security.

OP's just starting on programming, though. I feel that using existing frameworks or libraries would keep him from learning the actual language, or make him dependant on the framework. An example is jQuery.

Ask Javascript developers to write what they would on a page without using jQuery. Quite a few, who started with jQuery or got too used to it, will have a hard time implementing everything in pure Javascript.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

OP's just starting on programming, though. I feel that using existing frameworks or libraries would keep him from learning the actual language, or make him dependant on the framework. An example is jQuery.

Ask Javascript developers to write what they would on a page without using jQuery. Quite a few, who started with jQuery or got too used to it, will have a hard time implementing everything in pure Javascript.

jQuery is an example of just about everything being wrong. Instead of learning the language, or good practice in the language, they learned this god object which claimed to do everything but did most things fucking wrong. I fucking hate jQuery, and it's probably amongst my most extreme views to this date. Vanilla all the way, yo.

Why I would advocate learning a framework like Symfony is that it helps to understand sensible opinionated design patterns from the ground up, Symfony's approach to MVC is very sane and it's super easy to build an application with it whilst learning. Given how the documentation is generated, in some cases it's almost required to read through source code to fully understand behaviour, which has proven itself a great way to learn.