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keeping a variable between 2 values

Started by lsandini Apr 9, 2012 at 7:54 PM 5 replies 1.5k views

Original Post

Apr 9, 2012 at 7:54 PM

Hello,

Absolutely no programming skills here, but just getting into MVBE2010. I am not sure that this is the correct tool for me, but I guess what I need can be done in VB with very little help.

I have a variable whose value is x at time zero, and events that increase or decrease the variable's value for a determined amount of time. Think for example of a vehicle trying to stay in the middle of a road and being pushed left and right, or someone trying to keep a blood sugar level of 5 (mmol/l) while eating, running and taking insulin...

This little program needs to run in real-time, with the variable value being updated continuously or regularly, every second or every minute. The various events will act on the main variable for seconds, minutes or hours...

The GUI can be a single window, with the value of the main variable, and push buttons for triggering the various events. Some push to the right, some to the left.

Since i have no knowledge of other languages, would you suggest something else than VB ? I could use a little help here.

Thanks, Lorenzo

jdehaan

Apr 9, 2012 at 8:02 PM

I would suggest you take some time and actually get familiar with the language you ultimately choose.

You can do just as many things in VB as any other language, but in my opinion it isn't as easy to work with as say, C# or Java, especially for someone with no programming experience.

If you plan to only do windows development I'd suggest C# as it is a great language to learn programming with and there are tons of tutorials for many things, and you still get access to all of the windows form stuff that you have in VB.

Taking some time to actually learn can make a lot of difference!

scrap

Apr 10, 2012 at 2:47 AM

this is true. also the more you learn, you may not be able to write as much, but you understand more then you think , which means you can check open source programs thru out the internet and borrow code. its how im learning how to do certian things i want with C# using MVS.

TomKQT

Apr 10, 2012 at 9:38 AM

You can do just as many things in VB as any other language, but in my opinion it isn't as easy to work with as say, C# or Java, especially for someone with no programming experience.

I would say the exact opposite. In my opinion, VB is much better for people with no programming experience, because its syntax is more similar to "human speech" and it doesn't bother you so much with strict using of semicolons and { }.

Bacterius

Apr 10, 2012 at 10:12 AM

I would say the exact opposite. In my opinion, VB is much better for people with no programming experience, because its syntax is more similar to "human speech" and it doesn't bother you so much with strict using of semicolons and { }.[/quote]
You should probably use Pascal then if you are looking for a readable language. Any language with a general begin-end construct has my vote. VB vs C# is arguable however. The C# (as well as Java's, which I always found retardedly verbose) syntax is quite unforgiving towards people starting in programming, but it does have quite a few language features (not talking about libraries here) which make it easier to perform actions that are not immediately obvious in different languages. Think Python and the array slicing notation.

Anyway, at the OP's level it hardly matters, you can pick any language and starting learning with it. Unless you are actually switching paradigms then different languages are merely different syntaxes. All the programming concepts carry over painlessly.

TomKQT

Apr 10, 2012 at 10:42 AM

You should probably use Pascal then if you are looking for a readable language.

Pascal? That's IMHO very bad language for beginners, I've never understood why it's used at schools so much. It's wordy similarly to Basic, while also using semicolons with afaik different rules than in C (I haven't used Pascal for more than 10 years and even then it was only at one semester, I had to find some code on the internet now).
Semicolons may look easy and straight-forward, but I remember that most of my university schoolmates (with 0 programming experiences) were fighting not with what is a for loop, how does conditional statement work etc., but with which line should end with a semicolon and which not.

Basic is also easier as far as = is concerned (as in math it works both as assignment and comparison).

But you are right, it doesn't really matter for the OP. And language choice is not really important, changing languages is quite easy. What's difficult in programming are algorithms, libraries etc., not syntax.

lsandini

Apr 12, 2012 at 8:03 PM

Thank you for your answers. I took a bit of advice here and there, since obviously I won't be coding myself. My coders want to do ti in HTML5 and Java, so we'll see.

Lorenzo

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