What editor/compiler would you recommend to program a basic desktop app?

clem84

Gold Member
I searched thinking there would be a programming/coding OT but I didn't find any so I thought why not ask?

I need an app to read and parse the file names contained in a folder, and then output the result to a text file. I need the app to recover a specific part of the file name and make a list. Basically I need the app I will code to read the first part and second part of the filename, and then write a text file with all the numbers grouped by category.

This is my question. I have never programmed a desktop app to do anything. I learned C++ like 20 years ago. I'm not longer familiar with what's out there.

What is the best language to code this kind of app? C++?
What editor/compiler should I install on my Windows 10 PC?
 
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Some will inevitably reply with "Use this AI. It'll be 100X easier."

For me part of the reason I want to learn this is familiarising myself with coding again and just building my own simple little program. I would rather do it without AI.
 
Powershell or Python as you're familiar with coding.

As for 'AI', it is still good to use it to check your code. It's still you doing the coding that way, and no different to asking a human to review it.
 
Python, and you just need a simple script or an actual user interface? In that case check out pyqt
What you need to do is about 1 hour or work for someone with basic python knowledge, so you should get on fairly quick
 
100% PowerShell. I write scripts like this all the time for my job. These two lines get you halfway there:
Code:
$folderPath = "C:\path\to\folder"
$fileList = (Get-ChildItem -Path $folderPath).Name
Happy to help with the rest of the code too if you want to provide an example list of file names and what you want the end result to look like.
 
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100% PowerShell. I write scripts like this all the time for my job. These two lines get you halfway there:
Code:
$folderPath = "C:\path\to\folder"
$fileList = (Get-ChildItem -Path $folderPath).Name
Happy to help with the rest of the code too if you want to provide an example list of file names and what you want the end result to look like.
Hey thanks. I'm actually almost done. I asked ChatGPT to come up with a basic python script, which I then proceeded to heavily modify to my liking and right now, I'm 95% there. I just need to clean up the output in my file a little bit. It's actually a good way to learn. I'll check out powershell if I have the time. It got a lot of recommendations in this thread.
 
Could have just used an interface engine too, like nextgen connect (free). Minimal coding in JS, file reading and writing all handled by the engine itself (could also manually use FileUtil).

Sounds like you're done pretty much anyway
 
Check out electron.io or Flutter

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