Thread: Best Environment / Languages for a newbie

  1. #1
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    Talking Best Environment / Languages for a newbie

    Hi, my name is Brian and this is my first time posting. I have been programming for several years now, but it has been solely on the Macintosh platform. I have never programmed for a Windows box and would like to start playing around just for the learning experience of it. I would really like to start playing around with processes, I can't be really specific now because I just want to see what I can do, what can be done. With that in mind,

    1. What language would be best. I am thinking C. I have previous experience with C++, Java, and other assorted languages, but I am thinking when dealing with processes this may be the best language?

    2. What is the best environment? Eclipse, Codewarrior? I am used to Xcode on the Mac.

    3. Can anyone point me to tutorials on interacting with processes. Such as getting a list of active processes from the kernel or killing, spawning, communicating with processes, etc. Anything that can be done.

    Thanks in advance. I appreciate it.

    Brian

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    At the risk starting an all out war, I would say that if you are interested in learning about processes in windows, choose any language but c. The win32 api is not all that easy to learn, but there are some higher level API's that have been written for other languages which you might enjoy. To give you an idea, both C# and VB.NET give you the System.Diagnostics.Process class to work with, and there are probably several examples on the web that show how to use them. If you google for ".NET Framework Reference" you'll get to microsoft's docs pretty quickly, and they have a bunch of quickstart tutorials if you look around a bit. The compilers are free btw, you just have to look for the .NET SDK download on MSDN.

    Also, you could check out VBScript, which has a WMI interface, which can do the things you want. Just google Vbscript WMI Process and you should get some samples. No compiler needed, just type the sample into a text file, save with a .vbs extension, and run like this at the command line: "cscript //nologo scriptname.vbs". And if you're dead-set on using c, you could go to this link:
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de..._functions.asp
    which is the process and thread function docs on microsoft's site. Not sure which free c compiler is best.

    And if you're feeling adventurous, try them all. Then decide for yourself.
    The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. Doubtless this is so. But it proves nothing against the heavens, for the heavens signify simply: the impossibility of crows.

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    Thanks for the quick response. I will definately look into those.

    Just out of curiousity, why do you say that you would use any language but C?

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    As I've said, the API's are much harder to learn (in c). Go ahead and check out the link to the Process and Thread API's. And then look at another example for VB.NET or C#. And then decide for yourself which you prefer.
    The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. Doubtless this is so. But it proves nothing against the heavens, for the heavens signify simply: the impossibility of crows.

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