I will start working on a Project soon, and as I am a noob in regards to coding (and general indecisiveness due to the lack of knowledge), I would like to have some suggestions in regards to what type of Windows (forms) application I should build (eg. payroll system, library system, etc)
I know there are a lot of ideas out there, but I would like some suggestions of an easy system to build, including a system that is easy to expand on. Will also make use of a database (connecting SQL Server to the application)
I will be using .NET / C# (VS)
Thank you in advance.
In my experience 90% of the commercial systems I've been hired to write just involve relatively basic storage and manipulation of data with some layers of security around access.
Maybe start with something like a payroll system, but keep in the back of your mind that you could scale to accommodate a full HRMIS (Human Resources Management Information System). Also, experiment with ASP.NET MVC and Web Technologies, in my experience, the majority of systems now are moving to a web-based implementation.
The possibilities are endless in the world of software development.
You could make a winforms program that calculates all the primenumbers between two user inputs. You could also then output these to a XML-file, and make a button that lets the user open an XML-file and reload whatever they input back then.
It's pretty simple, but still involves some Winforms basics and some XML data storage/manipulation.
Related
I was wondering if you guys know of any software that allows me to jot down notes in a project based environment, as well as enabling me to track bugs or other issues in OSX. Basically, I have a lot of little projects on the go, and I would like to have one place where I can store and organize all their information. I have done lots of research on issue tracking systems, but they all seem to be overkill for what I need. I essentially need just a single user desktop application were I can enter bugs for myself to view later. So far I have basically been doing this with sticky notes/other such applications, but I think its time for a step up to an application that stores the history of bug fixes, open issues, etc. Any ideas? Thanks beforehand!
I know you mentioned desktop, but from reading your question I would recommend Trello http://www.trello.com.
Trello is really nice for keeping track of small to medium projects and does not take up all of your time when entering in steps.
I'm a freelance web developer working on multiple projects. Earlier I used to use small applications to keep track of project tasks. Now that the number of projects have increased, I've been using Microsoft Project Professional. The project management software ensures that I can test, report, and track all my project tasks. This helps me be in sync with project progress.
We were searching for a simple bug tracking solution too and found some pretty cool platforms like Instabug, BugSee, ... The problem was that they are pretty expensive, so we developed a new platform that's made for everyone. BugBattle.
https://www.bugbattle.io
It offers something that's called in-app bug tracking, which allows you to report bugs (+ all kinds of useful information like screenshots, meta data about devices, ...) directly within your app. It's super easy & fast to integrate. I takes about 2 minutes or so to integrate it within your websites, apps, webapps. Def. worth trying.
In addition we added features like the BugBattle Challenge, which enables you to basically fight against others in bug fixing challenges. Haha, it should be fun to fix bugs :)
I am looking into developing a commercial application using PHP. Since I have experience in CodeIgniter and it has been working well for me, I decided to use it. Now, if ever my application comes to a point that it needs to grow and have to have custom modifications in the platform, is it possible to modify the CodeIgniter source code to the point that it's far from the original?
I'd strongly recommend not modifying the source code as this is the back bone of the application will make updating to futures releases of codeigniter impossible.
Instead you should be creating your own classes/libraries that extend the core bases. This is best practice.
The codeigniter users guide has some fantastic information regarding this, http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/creating_libraries.html
Good luck.
Don't modify it, extend it. Ellislab is good about releasing bug fixes and patches, and the last thing you want is to have to re-engineer all the updates into your new hybrid everytime they release updated source code. Plus, different features and bug fixes are released at different paces for the core and reactor, so unless you plan to lock your framework in at the current version, extending is the way to go.
The good news is CI is built for and encourages extensions of the source. The system folder and the application folder separation are a clear indication of how you should segregate your enhancements from the base libraries.
CodeIgniter is written in PHP. You can completely rewrite the framework anyway you like. So the answer is "yes".
There are many big websites that were written in a different language or build on a framework when they started and have been rewritten many times since. I think a lot of developers (mostly freelancers) are over-thinking when starting out. When I start a project, then I try to get it done and get it out in the web asap. If a website starts taking of - and most of the times start making you money - then you can always take the time to rewrite it.
I think it is a lot more important to spend time when you plan and design your database and tables. I think it is a lot harder to redo parts of your database later on then it is to rewrite the code that uses the data.
Just my 2 cents.
If you have used CI, then you should know that being a PHP framework that all of the source-code is there in the download, furthermore opening the system and application folders and looking through there will tell you a lot. Yes all of the source is there in plain English (plain programming English) and not only is it in plain English but has been extensively documented inside and out (literally that is in the source and in the user-guide). CI gained initial fame from that simple fact, that all code is extensively and meticulously documented.
Beyond all that, the question itself raises concerns that maybe you should study CI a bit further before writing commercial applications using it. Ci is a powerful and very easy to use PHP framework, but it is not a WYSIWYG. In my opinion, a coder should know his tools inside and out in order to be able to create a solid secure and trusted application. The first measure of which is to read the user manual, you should know at the very least everything in it, and since there are 12 sections in it that cover everything from extending CI libraries to creating your own libraries, and everything in between I would say you need to spend a little more time with it.
I want to say though, I am not being rude or trying to shame you in any way I am simply saying that you should learn the framework a bit more before venturing into a commercial application using it.
In the early days of PHP people realized how amazingly easy it was to use and how fast you could write an application with it. At the time the major options where very difficult for new and hobby programmers to use or involved expensive software to run, PHP was free, easy to learn and most of all ran on a free OS. It also took hardly any setup to get going, you could download PHP and essentially be programming in minutes. All of these factors lead to the almost destruction of the language.
Entry level programmers were destroying it with bits of code taken from other applications, never knowing (or caring) what the code actually did beyond the simple fact that it did what they wanted at the time, never considering or even investigating if the code might be harmful. Because of this practice PHP applications that had grown to Goliath sized websites, taking thousands of hits an hour were:
beginning to crash
being hacked to reveal sensitive customer/client data
generally crumbling all around the web
All because since the language was so easy to use that people had taken advantage of it and failed to take time to learn it. PHP was becoming a joke to other professional programmers and wasn't even thought of as a viable application language by many who had dubbed it "the copy and paste" language.
So my advice to you, please take the time to know your tools inside and out, what makes them tick, if they have any gotchas and where they are vulnerable. I understand that in order to learn a language to a professional level you have to build with it so I suggest that you take it slow with CI stick to the core for now. Trust me when I say that even in its purest form CI is an amazing and powerful tool that in the right hands can create awesome powerful web application, but in the uneducated/inexperienced hands it can create havoc and destruction.
So (stepping off of the soap box) I simply ask that if you are serious about creating commercial applications period that you take your time and learn your tools/language become as close to an expert on them as possible. I gurentee that if you do that you will always have work when you need it and you will spend less hours beating your head against the table or worse explaining to a client why their site is down.
I truly wish you good luck, just slow down and learn your trade and you will do just fine.
Yes, Codeigniter is an open source framework. However, I would advise against modifying the core of Codeigniter, as most files can be extended and rewritten safely without modifying the core files which will cause you headaches if you ever decide to update.
To extend a core class by default you would do this in Codeigniter. We'll extended the parser class for this example, but this applies to all classes pretty much. This link in the comprehensive user guide will give you all the information you need to extended and overload methods inside of a Codeigniter core class: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/core_classes.html
Background
I'm at the planning stages of a DIY project that'll help me automate some hardware at my house. It's probably also worthwhile to mention that I've got almost no experience with web-related development.
The Basics
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4706/drawingo.png -- I can't seem to embed the diagram.
In order to simplify management, I want to implement my UI in the browser.
The meat of my application will reside inside a Windows service or Linux daemon; this does not mean, however, that I'm after a cross-platform solution -- I'm not tied to any particular platform, so I'll pick one (probably based on the responses that I get) and stick with it.
I would prefer to use "free" tools (e.g., LAMP/WAMP), but it's not a deal breaker.
It would be nice to be able to communicate back to the user that some action is in progress (I think AJAX would be one way to go?)
Questions
The only thing that's not entirely clear to me is the implementation of step № 3. I'd like to hear possible implementation ideas (on Windows or Linux) as to how this should be done. Hopefully some of you can share how this sort of thing is done in the real world.
Miscellaneous
As always, if there's a problem with my thinking, please point it out!
There are many people better qualified to help with step 3 so I'll leave that to them.
My question is whether is you are looking forward to learning the mess of web technologies required for the front end or consider it a necessary evil on the way to what you really want to accomplish? If the latter (and assuming you are working in C/C++) consider taking a look at WT. It's a toolkit that makes the developing the web interface seem more like a desktop gui while handling much of the ugliness for you. It could potentially cut a lot of time off your development.
There are many more technologies and tools available to build the front end for an application.
Which is the best technology/tool/platform available using which I can build a better GUI, by which I'll be able to build a nice looking as well as an efficient GUI?
Definition of "better" includes factors such as efficiency,user friendliness,better content control mechanism, navigation and many more.
I know this is a question about which GUI toolkit you should use, but your first technology for producing a user-friendly UI is pen and paper. Sketch out some mock-ups. Draw buttons and menus on construction paper, cut them out, and glue them together. Then try your mockups on about a half-dozen people. You'll quickly find out what makes a good UI.
It doesn't matter how good the UI looks or whether it uses the latest snazzy effects -- if your users can't figure out how to use it, they'll go elsewhere. You need to learn what works for your target audience before you write a single line of code.
Read Don't Make Me Think to learn how to make mock-ups and do user testing.
If' you're tracking an IP address, you'll definitely want to create your GUI Interface in Visual Basic.
Use the .NET framework in Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010 Studio. I haven't developed in any other environment, but I have been able to create nice looking apps in this IDE / Framework.
"Best" depends on what your evaluation function is.
For ease of development, and high quality UI, in a non-web based app it's hard to beat C#/VB or any other .NET language and environment for a windows-based app. Depending on the quality of the UI, MPF will give you greater flexibility and control, whereas windows form will make it easier to develop.
Having used Windows Presentation Foundation for a while now i would highly recommend it. There is a pretty big learning curve and, to be honest, MSFT should have included some controls (the datagrid being the biggest one) that were not included by default (but will be in .NET 4.0). Where WPF and XAML exceed is providing a foundation from which you can build just about anything. You can style ANY part of ANY control and build your own composite controls from scratch. A lot of thought went into binding and value converters and once you get used to the declarative nature of XAML you wont want to turn back. The company I work for has been using it for a couple of years now and the difference between the GUIs we used to develop (mainly winforms and asp.net) and what we develop now are night and day in terms of both look-and-feel and functionality. My two cents anyway...
It depends.
What device will the GUI be used on, hand held, PC, Mac?
What platform Windows, Linux, Web?
What kind of application will it be, accounting, email client, web application?
What audience will be using the application (a GUI aimed at a child may be different than one aimed at an adult)?
All of these things must be taken into account before even starting to formulate an answer to your question.
You have several choices for developing a GUI.
first, if cross platform is an issue consider using Java or Python.
you can also use Adobe AIR and develop the gui in Flex.
If you direct the product to windows only users .NET WPF is the best solution, with a very rich set of control and examples.
You can also use .NET with mono for cross platform compatibility, but WPF isn't currently supported.
Desktop, Mobile, Windows, Linux, Database, OpenGL: Nokia Qt. Wiht Python - PyQt development process is shortest and easy. Application containing all required python & qt libraries and modules is around 30MB with Inno Setup installation is 8MB and will work on Windows 2000 and newer for Python 2.6.x, Python 2.5.x based application will run from Windows 95 to Windows 7.
I think all the attributes you list -- efficiency, user friendliness, etc -- are attributes of a good design rather than a good toolkit. Just about any toolkit can be used to meet those goals. I think the question might be different if you were asking about eye candy, fancy multi-media, etc. There are definitely some toolkits that do that better than others.
If you're interested in usability first (and it sounds like you are), focus on the design then pick whatever toolkit meets your current abilities and can handle your design. For example, if you require 3D images that might narrow your choices; likewise if you need to show videos, that will influence which toolkits you can choose from.
So, start with a good design. From that, create a list of requires for the toolkit -- rich editing controls, video, 3D, etc. And then look for a toolkit that provides what you need.
The best toolkit in the world won't make up for poor design.
Personally after having used Win32, Forms and WPF then going to Mac/iPhone GUI development, I very much prefer the flexibility and high quality of visuals in the Mac/iPhone GUI.
One of the most useful examples is the fact that in NSTable/UITable controls (ListViews or similar in Windows), every cell is a fully customisable View (a Control in Windows).
Where in a ListView you have very little customisation for each cell/item in the view since you only provide details, not an actual control, an NSTable/UITable asks you for a table cell which you can add anything to, such as buttons, switches and image views.
Mac OS GUI development to me is a LOT more flexible and more consistently flexible in that regard. Everything is a View so I can my own contents to anything.
Have you considered Silverlight?
It can be used to create internet applications, but it can also be run out of browser to create desktop applications. It's has significant overlap with WPF though there are differences which might catch you out when swapping from one to the other.
Expression Blend 3 is a very good visual designer and the code it produces is quite efficient.
I'm having trouble deciding if I want a project of mine to be web-based (as in a web-app), desktop-based (a desktop application), or a desktop application that can sync or connect to the cloud.
I don't know if anyone else would have an interest in this application, and it's only going to be for me, so I'm leaning toward desktop application. If, for some reason, I finish it, release it, and people actually like it, I might see about making it sync to the cloud as well (think v2). But I'm not sure how hard it is to make such a radical change, and I don't want to end up with something good that is useless because I made a poor choice before I even started the project.
Is there any sort of guidance for this? Any rules of thumb or best practices? Any personal experiences?
If the language matters, I'm thinking about Java simply because I'm most comfortable with it, and it would easily allow me to share it with my friends for testing and if I get stuck and need help from someone else in person.
I generally ask a few questions:
Can it even be done on the web? Something I did not too long ago involved an image editing component, and had to be a web app. It involved much pain to get this work, and a desktop app would have been a far better way to go.
Will I need to access it from anywhere? Yeah you could load it up on a thumb drive, but the web is far more feasible in this case.
Will there be multiple users? This could go either way, but "long tail" stuff usually means web.
What tech do you want to use? The latest and greatest WPF based UI? Desktop (yeah yeah, silverlight, let's not go there ok?). The brain dead stupid easy user management of Django or others? Web.
If it were a web app, will you need to worry about common attack vectors like SQL Injection, XSS, etc? A desktop app has its own issues here too, but tend to have less exposure.
How resource intensive is it? Will 10 users kill performance of a web server?
Versioning on the desktop can be a pain, whereas with a webapp everyone is on the same version. This can bite you though, see the New Facebook user pushback.
EDIT:
Cost can be a factor too. A web app with a database backend typically means a web server. If you want to stick with, say, the Microsoft Stack, you'll need licenses for SQL Server which can get pricey. Open source is cheaper, but may not be an option in all cases. "Serving" a desktop app is generally cheaper.
If you release as a web-app, you won't have to port it over. You'll also have access to it wherever you go.
I base my choice on the GUI mostly. If the GUI is going to be complex, and (needs to be fast or will have aspects of it that will take a lot of time to process) then I will go with the Desktop. If it is simple, and will always have small data sets to work with at once, the I will go with the Web.
I have worked on an app that was made as a web app, when clearly it was better suited for the desktop. It was a massive failure. I don't know HOW customers put up with it, cause I certainly wouldn't have used it. The desktop version (which took over 6 months to re-write) blew the web version out of the water.
That being said, I have seen some nice web apps.
All I can suggest are several factors that would be relevant. How you determine the answer and weight for the factor is up to you and other circumstances:
What is your audience? Do you have any control over them?
How complex are the interactions you expect to implement?
Do you require near real-time data updates?
How often do you expect to update the application after the first release?
Do you expect a well-defined set of client platforms, or can you not predict that?
Note that your choices also can include a Java WebStart application, which mitigates some of the disadvantages of a typical desktop application.
I'd say that most applications should be desktop-based. The advantages are faster and more fluid apps.
You should only create a web application if there are obvious benefits from it, like access from everywhere. (If that's necessary for your app.)
A downside of web applications can also be that it is dependent on the developer, if you quit supporting it all your users (if you'll have any) can't use it anymore. Furthermore, there is a chance that users are not willing to store their data online.
Ultimately it depends on what kind of an application you want to write. Even if you create it as a desktop-app, you can later on rewrite it for the web. Often a 2.0 version of software needs almost complete rewriting anyway.
Sometime web can be good and sometime not. We are in a new wave that go in the web but do not forget few things:
GUI in web is more complicated because of multiple browser
People who need to work on your system might not like working the whole day in a browser
Web can be slower for some application (image editing, hard job that require a lot of CPU)
Rapid Gui like Visual Studio for winform are faster than for web
But web has many advantage in the deployement and in the portability. If your system is well structured you could make both or change to one to other later with something build with MVC. Just change your visual and you will be fine.
If this were an application to be used my multiple users, with shared data, you're probably going to want a server anyway. In that case I'd lean towards a web application.
Otherwise you've got the complexity of syncing data between the desktop and a server.
Two important questions not on the list so far:
Will the first version have any features that need lowish-level access to hardware?
Will future versions have any featuers that need lowish-level access to hardware?
It's pretty easy to answer the first one, but giving the second one some thought can save you some headache down the road.
My default choice is to go with a web solution, as it's easier to deploy and generally multi-platform. The only time I go with winforms apps is when there are pressing security, performance, or functionality issues that require it.
Previously you'd have written a desktop application, as tool were better for that and you'd have written it faster. People used to want web apps, but always ended up with desktop.
Nowadays things are different, you can write a webservice just as quickly and easily so there's no reason not to go web-based.
The advantages of web-based are flexibility, scalability and ease of deployment. It won't be as responsive as a desktop app could be, but that's not so much of an issue if you think about your design.