05-30-2008, 06:02 PM
Writing software is somewhere between an art and a science. My undergraduate degree was in Computer Science. This was back in the 80's, so the concept of a GUI application was pretty new. I did some GUI-like programming back in the 90's, first on a Sun workstation, then doing some Visual Basic programming on the PC. So I do have experience coding. With that said, I'm basically going to say that learning to code is not easy. You might be able to cobble together a few basic applications, but I'd give up on trying to do anything sophisticated.
I also bring another important perspective. I am the Lead Engineer/Software Support Manager of a Curriculum Development program used throughout the Navy. I have been with the program for almost 14 years. I know exactly the kind of stuff that is needed to go into a program that will create learning objectives, curriculum outlines, class scheduling, testing, lesson plans and student guides. I don't do the actual programming, but I have seen the code, and I know exactly how the program works. The unfortunate thing, though, is that it is Gov't owned software, so you can't get it.
However, I can tell you that it is essentially a serious of Visual Basic modules that work as a front-end to a large relational database. And I'm not talking "Visual Basic macros" like you see in MS Office. I'm talking the full-blown language, which controls everything like the windowing, controls, etc. The total size of the application, compiled, comes out at about 100MB.
If you would like pointers on what kind of things are necessary to program something like this, I'd be happy to give you some pointers.
I also bring another important perspective. I am the Lead Engineer/Software Support Manager of a Curriculum Development program used throughout the Navy. I have been with the program for almost 14 years. I know exactly the kind of stuff that is needed to go into a program that will create learning objectives, curriculum outlines, class scheduling, testing, lesson plans and student guides. I don't do the actual programming, but I have seen the code, and I know exactly how the program works. The unfortunate thing, though, is that it is Gov't owned software, so you can't get it.
However, I can tell you that it is essentially a serious of Visual Basic modules that work as a front-end to a large relational database. And I'm not talking "Visual Basic macros" like you see in MS Office. I'm talking the full-blown language, which controls everything like the windowing, controls, etc. The total size of the application, compiled, comes out at about 100MB.
If you would like pointers on what kind of things are necessary to program something like this, I'd be happy to give you some pointers.
