"RobertL" wrote in message
...
On Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at 9:48:48 PM UTC, Ferretygubbins wrote:
I know this is OT but I rather suspect that some of you will be able to
help.

Boy1 (13) is interested in learning how to write code and so I would like
to
set him up with a toolkit for his PC (Windows) unfortunately my
programming
days are somewhat in the past and restricted to MUMPS which was archaic
even
back then. Has anyone any suggestions for a suitable platform? As ever
the
cheaper the better.

as everyone keeps saying, depends what he plans to write the code for,

i've recently been fannying about trying to learn how to code, my initial
reason was to write programs for the arduino boards i use in my simulator
interfaces, (to get a bus dashboard working as if it were still in a real
bus... so warning lights coming on as appropriate, gauges following the in
game gauge needles etc)
This also required a plug in written in delphi to determine what data is
grabbed, but thankfully that part was already done, delphi is ass backwards
compared to C i think.

But even the delphi stuff was easier to play with once i had learnt a little
bit of C from playing with arduino's.


Then i started messing about getting the data out of a train simulator,
again with the idea to run a real train's control desk with data from a sim,
again arduino's will be used, so it's C to write the actual program that
runs on the arduino's to move the needles and operate the lights, but the
train simulator doesnt have a native data output program like the bus
simulator does, so i've had to figure out LUA just to get the raw data out
of the simulator,

it seems LUA is getting more and more popular nowadays, and i see loads of
references to something about world of warcraft and LUA modding, so if the
kid plays WOW, this might be the thing to get results that he will be
interested in straight away,

For me, i downloaded microsoft visual studio express, and played with a few
of the tutorials, then played about with LUA code,
still learning and i know very little, but got conjunctivitis right now, so
i keep loosing sharpness in my vision, loose sight of the mouse cursor, and
am distracted too much to think properly.