HEy guys new to the forum and i am ready to get started on makeing some multitouch apps. so i went out and bought visual studio 2008. i know alot about computers, however i have never touched code or read about it. and i was just wandering if the comunity had any pointrs on what to use c# c++ or c, and also if you had ant links of files that would help a noob learn how to code thanks alot, oh and i am in the process of getting all my materials togather to buil my table i think i am going to go with ftir.

Hello stevencsimon, and welcome to the forums!

If you’re new to coding alltogether, i’m not sure if starting out with C++ or C is a good idea.
C# might be your thing since it is very similar to Java, for which you can find many many many tutorials, books and examples.
So i would suggest getting Java, using either Eclipse or NetBeans since they give you nice little pointers and help on-the-fly while you are coding so you can get a feel of what object oriented programming is like.
Besides countless online tutorials, there are great books for Java (like those by Liang) you could buy.
Then i suggest you move on to C# and/or Processing (Processing is java based and a great way to bodge together little experiments and try-outs)
Since C# and java are *very* similar, it won’t be a very big step.
(This is what I did, and i’m happy with it, though it might not work out for everyone )

There is also many tutorials for C#, so you can skip java

thanks for the fast responses, I think I am going to go with c#, Daniel D do you know what tutorials to start with, as you said there are many tutorials out there and I have no idea where to start.

google is your friend too, steven.

just searching for C# tutorials comes up with this baby as first result :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288436.aspx

you can say what you want about microsoft, but C# is some pretty neat and well documented stuff all together.

for a more in-depth-to-programming approach of tutorial look here:

http://www.softsteel.co.uk/tutorials/cSharp/contents.html

thanks recklessness, those links are great when I searched on google It came back with alot of results and i got overwhelmed, and dident know where to begin. now my eyes hurt from wacthing so many vidieos. oh and i have one more question, how do you customize the buttons and other things in visual studio, so that i can make them look like buttons in progarms like the back, stop home, etc. butons in firefox. or do i need a seperate program for this.
I appreciate the help you guys are giveing me and so it dosent seem like you are spoonfeeding me as soon as i get to microcenter this weekend i am going to pick up some cameras and other hardware so i can build my table.

p.s. i am very interested in useing other sensors fo multitouch like rfid,ultrasonic range sensor, ect. also in intagrateing devices to make the table do something phyisical like home automation or camera control, also the whole surface thing where you can order from it. this is why i would like to learn how to code so i can intigrate the hardware to the software. hardware is what im good at.
i should get great results once i build my table becase i am useing pc i built myself, heres the specs, intel core 2 extreme, nForce 790i Ultra SLI 775 ATX Motherboard, NVIDIA SLI-Ready 2GB PC-8500 DDR2(x2), GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB GDDR3 PCIe 2.0(x2). thats just the impotant parts. i used to work at microcenter so i got a good discount on most of that. and i dont spend money on anything put computer stuff so i hope that i can get all the multitouch stuff working with this rig, and that i can code fo vista as thats what i am useing

sorry for the long post im going without 2 days of sleep and i am wired on redbull and snickers

hahahah yeah, i get that too sometimes
anyhow, keep in mind that because we allready work with visually oriënted hardware, that’s where all the research has been done, and where people can help you with your programs.
It is also the easyest approach to DIY multi-touch that exists at this moment.
Ultrasonics have been applied in touch screens allready, however tracking multiple fingercontacts will be a damn confusing job (both hardware and softwarematically)

I won’t go in-depth very much yet, because you will get there in time

Get yourself the O’Reilly book “Programming C#” by Jesse Liberty

it is about CODE and will teach you the essential C# language to know, as well as some OOP concepts (object oriented programming)
the book actually focuses on ... CONSOLE APPLICATIONS (Dos prompt!!) ... that is actually GOOD because you will learn programming and won’t be confused by 1000 other things on top (graphics, controls, etc)

take care!

Sorry for starting up an old thread, but for anybody new reading through the posts, I figured this would be an appropriate place to post, I found a great resource when going through programming tutorials, unfortunately, you do have to pay for it, but the wealth of information is amazing for starting out, it’s called learnvisualstudio.net, I’m a little afraid to post a full on link being that I’m so new I don’t want to look like a forum spammer, but just add a www. in front of the learnvisualstudio.net.

If you look around you can find some free videos from the site too.