AVR Freaks

Well, .Net supports "sockets" communication. (See e.g. this .)

 

Disclaimer: I've not used .Net sockets (or at least can't recall ever using it) but have used other TCP/IP APIs. Glancing over the class documentation it looks like a fairly straight-forward socket class.

 

There's also a TcpListener class, and the documentation page shows one straight-forward example of usage.

 

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I suggest you want for some other recommendations also  - I suspect that others here also have experience with writing Windows applications, and maybe started from a spot similar to yours (I've been writing Windows software for roughly 25 years).

 

But ... if you're interested in C#/.Net then start having a look around the documentation, and search out some beginner tutorials. Filter hard - the subject is vast!

Indeed.

 

TCP/IP (and higher protocols like HTTP) have been pretty much de rigueur for any PC app for the last few decades.

 

designing the GUI just by dragging things like buttons and check boxes onto the canvas of the program.

Again, that has been pretty much de rigueur for any PC GUI development for the last few decades.

 

Personally I'd just use Python for such things these days.

and then you wouldn't be stuck with having to use a Windows PC to run it on - it'd work on a Raspberry Pi, a Linux box, etc, etxc, ...

 

Apparently you can also use Python as a script language in Libreoffice.

https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=li...

 

This way you should be able to put your data almost directly into a spreadsheet and draw graphs from that with minimal programming.

TBH, I found wxPython to be rather clunky.

 

It seemed all to easy to mess up the design in the GUI editor, and the only way to recover would be to manually hack the XML file.

 

But it was what the Client was using ...

Thanks Andy!

 

For "simple" applications (one window, a few (10 or max 20) widgets) is it feasible to "do it all in code" without any fancy "UI editor"? That's how the tutorial I found did it..

I just put the code (copy below) from: Simplest Web Browser in Python & Tkinter – 32 lines of code

http://knowpapa.com/wb/

...

in a text file, saved it as asdf.py, made it executable and executed it with: "python3 asdf.py"

 

And it "works". It starts a GUI. I can enter an URL in a entry box, click on "Go" and the text of some remote website in the text area.

Pretty impressive for a hand full of code.

#!/usr/bin/python3
from tkinter import *
import urllib.request
def go():
	text.delete(1.0, END)
	with urllib.request.urlopen(entry.get()) as response:
		received_html = response.read()
	text.insert(1.0, received_html)

browser_window = Tk()
browser_window.title('knowpapa browser')
label = Label(browser_window, text= 'Enter URL:')
entry = Entry(browser_window)
entry.insert(END, "http://knowpapa.com")
button = Button(browser_window, text='Go', command = go)
text = Text(browser_window)
label.pack(side=TOP)
entry.pack(side=TOP)
button.pack(side=TOP)
text.pack(side= TOP)
browser_window.mainloop()

Upto this level xwWidgets seems to look quite like tkInter.

Managing a handfull of widgets in code also does not seem a big problem to me (Although I haven't done it).

But avoid the magic numbers. Define some constants for coordinates and size if you want to line up some check boxes.

This is where the graphical GUI designers really come into their own: you don't have to manually mess about with coordinates - they let let you specify how things align, what "sticks" to what, how they "strectch" when the window is resized, etc, etc, ...

@Fianawarrior: I'm curious: Did you get any further on this? I'm interested in any experiences with environments I've not used..

This is just to mention this post:

 

https://www.avrfreaks.net/comment...

 

It generated this:

 

 

The development environment I prefer for Python is PyCharm from JetBrains:

 

 

That is "free" for personal use.

I did a wee bit of Python half a year ago, and took the recommendation from Cliff to try out PyCharm. Here are the votes from the Swedish jury:

 

• High quality, stable
• Very good adoption to Python (not just a generic IDE with Python half-arsedly tacked onto it).
• A lot of high end-functionality when it comes to "helping the coder" (auto-completion, "code suggestions" etc). If you don't like/want this then PyCharm isn't for you.
• Good debugging functionality

 

On the downside

• "Big UI", cluttered. I did not work with it long enough to see how much it could be tweaked - so this might be a somewhat unfair point.

 

I've heard and seen enough about the good things from JetBrains to consider buying a license - and then probably the "everything" license that gets me their C/C++ IDE, their C# fix-up'er, SQL module etc.. The prices where just a wee bit to prohibitive for me as a privateer to just take the jump. But it's still "on the trampoline.."

Details?

My first "formally taught" language was Pascal (at university). It was actually a good language to learn first because of structured programming, strong types and so on. So to answer "who wants to learn Pascal?" well I'm one ;-)
.
Of course just as Dartmouth BASIC became unrecognizable in later variants like Visual Basic the Pascals of today bear little resemblance to Wirth's original.

I also learned Pascal as my first language in college.

Haven't used it since then.

If we discount 6502 assembly language then my first language was PL/M.

Taught myself BASIC.

Taught myself 6809 assembly.

Took FORTRAN in high school (avoided COBOL).

Took Pascal and Ada at uni.

Took a major career detour.

New career detour converged onto abandoned career.

Taught myself C.

Taught myself AVR assembly.

 

Living the dream ;-)

I can't answer that question.

 

Had you asked "Do you know Pascal?" I could have given an answer.

 

 Uh uh. I know what you're thinking. "Does he know Pascal or not?" Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being that I studied at Uni around 1980, and Pascal was the new up'n'coming language - not to mention Turbo Pascal had a decent "market share" for DOS programs for the following 5 or 10 years - you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, Paul? 

I hope you take no offense, Paul! That was just to fun and tempting to be able to resist..

 

 

No, a Pascal of today is likely not the same as VAX Pascal (adhering fairly well to "Wirth Standard") or Turbo Pascal (a decent amount of extra "bling"), but I taught Pascal for a number of years. Between 5 and 10 years, depending on how you define "teaching". And it's a "structured, block-oriented, strong-typed language (with strong separate compilation features, if we're talking Turbo)". Not the first such I've seen. Not the second. I' think I'll manage. ;-)

 

If an option for throwing together some simple GUI app is to revive Pascal, I'll might consider it if Lazarus is good enough. So, since Fianawarrior had a look at Lazarus I thought it would be really interesting to know how he had fared. Especially since he is not "tainted" by some previous environment for doing Windows apps.

 

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And thus, Fianawarrior, I am still interested in any experiences you had.

 

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It's not that I don't want to dig in myself. But if someone is testing something in this jungle it would make sense to share experiences. There are sooo many alternatives out there.. Here's what I can think of, right now, off the top of my head. No special order, just vomiting:

 

• Lazarus
• Java/Groovy with SWT
• Java/Groovy with AWT
• Griffon (think Grails, but for "Hosted GUI apps" rather than Web Apps/services
• C# with Windows Forms (a .Net framework for GUIs)
• VB.Net with Windows Forms 
• WxWidgets in combination C++
• Python/PyQt
• Python/TkInter
• Python/WxPython
• Pearl probably has at least some options similar to Python
• Ruby probably has at least some options similar to Python
• Tcl/Tk
• Xojo (mentioned by Jim (west coast) above)

 

and certainly many, many more.. And I didn't mention things like Microsoft WPF (because it's not "easy" in the sense sought after in this thread).

 

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OK, I viewed that video, and peeked into ones that follows. Seems pretty standard, reminiscent of e.g. C# and Windows Forms, or Java and SWT (in a decent IDE).

 

Just one note, on Simple calculator part 3. In there the presenter codes

if RadioButtonAdd.Checked = True then
  LabelAnswer.Caption := ...

*Handing that Pascal code in to me circa 1980 would have had him mildly flunked.

 

Pascal is a langiuage with a "strong and clean" Boolean type. The if-statement requires an expression that is of type Boolean after the "if". The Checked method of a RadioButton onviously returns a Boolean. So..

 

The

= True

is un-necessary, a tautology and serves no meaningful purpose. Of-course he should have coded

if RadioButtonAdd.Checked then
  LabelAnswer.Caption := ...

 

As I said, very much like some other often used environments. Nice thing compared to C#/WinForms is that it (allegedly) supports several platforms. (Now, will that require separate builds or not? I.e. Does it generate OS-native code or does it run on a virtual platform like Java and .Net stuff?)

 

Might just d/l it eventually and try it out. Other things in the pipe that needs attention first.

 

And I'm still (genuinely!) interested in hearing from Fianawarrior what he found crapp'ish.

Oh, I've had a three-digit number of students doing that horrid thing, and it was a long time since me teaching. I'll let him pass.. ;-)

 

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The mistake/ugliness/stench is similar to what we often see here when testing for a bit set in C:

 

if ((someValue & (1<<bitNumber)) != 0) ...

when this would suffice

if (someValue & (1<<bitNumber) ) ...

 

I still use the program structure and the concept (where possible) of "strong types" I learned in Pascal in whatever other language I use. So you might not use the same syntax but the higher level concepts that the language teaches you will stay forever.

 

In colleges these days I think it's Java they tend to teach now? It probably achieves much the same. It's the techniques not so much as the syntax that give you a basis for anything else you go on to do. College is supposed to be a lot like this - not so much teaching you the exact thing but the concepts and techniques that are more generally useful (in pretty much every procedural language there is some concept of iterative (for) loops for example).

Thanks Johan,

 

This was a very rewarding link. Thank you.

Curious: I have posted three links in this thread (upon a quick glance) - to a Lazarus tutorial and two links to ,Net documentation. Which one are you referring to?

 

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I can also report that I had a half-hour stint with two attempts at installing Lazarus on Linux (Mint 18) a few evenings ago. Both failed with protests about stuff missing. Installing from the distro repo (e.g. using apt, Synaptic..) seemed to end quite bad. Installing the three .deb packages from Lazarus web site also failed.

 

Sorry, no details. Abandoned, and didn't investigate further. Lack of time.

 

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone having installed Lazarus with success on a recent Linux in the "Debian family".

Uh. I always miss those "in reply to"...