C programming

[Cortona]

I would also go for C, Steve, as VB is specific to Microsoft and you want to program the Amiga as well. I always found C easier than VB.

The language I had to use for my main programming course a uni was Ada. Really useful if you want to program nuclear missile guidance systems for a career! Not so useful when looking for non-military employment.

[Buleste]

The language I had to use for my main programming course a uni was Ada. Really useful if you want to program nuclear missile guidance systems for a career! Not so useful when looking for non-military employment.

Have you thought about terrorism? It's a growing market and you don't have to be all that accurate with the guidence calculations either.

[Harrison]

Degree in terrorism. I always find it mad when courses teach specific languages that are not mainstream.

I also agree with everyone else Steve. C is the way to go as it is the language most used professionally. Most games, OSs and applications are coded in it. Even Workbench!

By contrast VB isn't a good language. It uses non standard syntax and is locked into Microsoft products. It is also not free. If for example you utilised VB for making websites via ASP then you would not be able to run the ASP scripts for free as you would with PHP, but instead would need to buy a license to run a Microsoft based Windows server. Not nice.

C is also a great language to learn as the syntax is very similar to many other languages. Java, Javascript, PHP, actionscript etc... all slightly different and all a bit easier that C itself, but learn C and you can pick any others up quite easily.

Regarding MSDOS. You don't need to use MSDOS and I wouldn't advise it. But you can still code C programs to run in the commandline of XP or any other NT based OS, or Linux just fine and it is more stable than DOS.

[Stephen Coates]

Thanks for the information everyone. I have started doing some of the examples in the C book. I have entered them in using nano and compiled them using GCC on Linux. I wasn't sure what compiler to use in DOS/Windows, so i thought i would use GCC in Linux because my linux installation is bound to have it installed. It didn't so I attempted to install it using Aptitude only to find that it wanted it to be installed from the CD which I had lost. I eventually managed to configure it to install stuff from the internet.

Harrison: MS-DOS is essential for this project. At least for testing it. NT could be used but that would be a very big inconveniance since accessing the parallel port in NT would appear to be rather difficult. MS-DOS will be necessary for testing because I would rather just get on with testing to find out if the hardware that i am going to make actually functions as it should, rather than messing about trying to get past Windows NT/the >386's security thingies. I think if I were to make it run on a more modern OS I would just use Linux.

Of course Linux and NT will probably be more than suitable for stuff that doesn't require access to the I/O ports.