Suggestions on starting point for a complete noob who wants to make something

[Darkclone]

Hi All!

 

I have so much trust in the people on this forum that this is honestly my first port of call for asking/investigating this.

 

I want to start learning how to make programs (for fun more than anything) and I have something I want to make for myself but that I can give to workmates to use as well. It to me sounds like it would be a basic first thing to make. I want to describe what it is if anyone could then give me suggestions on what they think the best coding language would be to build it in please. I intend to then go and try and learn how to make it and see where the rabbit hole goes lol.

 

So basically, in one of my roles I help to support telephone crisis supporters when they are on imminent risk calls, as well as offering debriefs and wellbeing checks. On really busy nights sometimes we are juggling more than one call. So as a way of making this easier there are certain sentences we keep in a word document that we just copy and paste into the chat box. For example a "Hello" kind of message, then a "I am listening now" kind of message (obviously they are more complex than just a couple of words). Our chat system uses a color coding triage with 4 different colors to let us know what the importance of each chat is.

 

So my idea is to make a simple program that basically replaces the use of the word document. The top would have the 4 color code options, you select one and it stays selected until you choose another. Then underneath that would be boxes with simple things on it like "Greeting", "Listening", "Risk" and so on. So having a color selected then pressing one of these buttons would determine the version of that message you are copying. So say for "Greeting" if you have someone reaching out as they are starting their shift your greeting would be different to if you are "Greeting" someone who needs support on an imminent call.

 

Settings wise: I would like it that the word displayed on the box on the main page is something that can be customized in settings. I would also like it that each person can set their own desired messages to be copied when the button is pressed. Maybe a stretch goal would be to have multiple sentences per button so that we are not always just using the same "Greeting" each time.

 

I hope this makes sense. I was going to go all microsoft paint to do a sketch but apparently I don't have paint installed lol.

 

But yeah, I am not looking for someone to make this for me, just for a point in the right direction on where to start please - i.e., what coding language to use, any suggestions on what it is best to compile it in, as well as any resources that would be good for a noob like me. I will say my only coding experience is from high school (I was 17y.o.) where I used some beginners coding thing to make a turtle create a blackjack game for me lol.

 

Thanks for any help  sorry for being slack and starting here, but as I said I trust the LTT forums to send me in the right direction.

 

[shadow_ray]

This is a really cool project, but I would recommend not to jump straight into this. Having high expectations could ruin your motivation when things don’t work out well or you run into obstacles.

 

Do small tasks first and when you feel reasonably comfortable using the language and frameworks of your choice, then you can start the bigger project. I think this way you can spare a lot of stress and the quality of the end product is going to be better as well.

 

If you don’t mind making it publicly available, then the simplest way (probably) would be to create statically hosted website. So, people can use it just by typing in the URL no install or anything else is required. If you add new features all they have to do is reload the page, no update or reinstall is required.

 

This was my two cent's worth.

Edited February 19, 2022 by shadow_ray
line brakes + emoji

[Darkclone]

Thanks for the reply. I don't think unfortunately that they would let me use a website for it as they are very privacy focused. I get that this project is not great as a starter thing, but also at the same time I don't expect to make it in 2 seconds either. I expect at least months of fiddling around to even get something basic.

[N0ps32]

I would recommend starting with client side (HTML/CSS/Javascript/Typescript) web development. It's very engaging since you can directly see our results and it will allow you to write a large range of applications ranging from websites, back-end servers, command line applications to desktop and even mobile apps. The community is huge and you can use everything you create on pretty much all modern operating systems. 

[Darkclone]

Thanks @Sakuriru and @N0ps32I will look into both options!

[Franck]

On 2/19/2022 at 1:51 PM, Sakuriru said:

I recommend using WPF for step 4 and not WinForms.

Hum not sure on that one. WPF learning curve is very steep.

I would personally place the learning curve difficulty more like :

Console > Winform > ASP.NET > WPF