Should a novice programmer spend time learning to write "desktop" applications these days, or is the web where it's at?

Question

As a novice, I've spent time learning a smattering of C and a fair bit of PHP. I've looked at writing desktop applications for Windows, but there seems to be a fair barrier to entry due to complexity of APIs. Is it worth learning this, or will native applications become less common in the future?

The way I see it, the only desktop application I ever use is a web browser and a text editor as well as the obviously the OS itself. Everything I need is online now.

Is learning to write non-web applications a useful skill going forwards? If so, what should I learn?

Answer 1

You should learn whatever you want to learn. If you don't you'll probably find it harder going than you need to.

I personally started writing desktop applications for Windows, because I used it at the time. These days I do think that you're correct - you can produce a website / online-application without investing so much into the process.

But even writing a decent web application is going to be hard if you're new to programming. A standalone page is simple, but when you add databases, security, and administration into the mix then things can grow.

Answer 2

There will always be a market for native apps, although a lot of stuff is moving to the web and there's more scope than ever before for web based apps, native GUI applications are never going to go away entirely.

However, it's really, really hard to give you any really useful advice other than stick with what you like. If you use web stuff exclusively, it would be a bit foolish to go and become a windows GUI programmer :)

Answer 3

Non-web applications will be very useful for the far future (as I see right now). We will not be able to do anything with the efficiency as a well written desktop application online using an interpreted scripting language that has to use a network protocol to communicate with the client. However, if you are interested in networking, maybe you can try a little of both. Make an rss reader, a simple web browser, or an IRC client. Their all great projects.

Answer 4

In my oppinion, a novice should conentrate on the basics and internals of the language of choice. Graphical or web interfaces should wait until you know what you're doing in the backend. I personally would suggest you start with console programs, but I guess that depends on the platform you're using. Maybe desktop interfaces are easier to start with on Windows.

The best practice (in my oppinion) is to write a solid backend with the functionality you want to provide and write it in a modular way, so you can later decide if you want to provide a desktop interface or a web interface (or both). The choice for the user interface shouldn't matter in the beginning.

Answer 5

I don't think it is ever a good idea to choose one side and stick with it religiously. I think a good engineer will expose himself to as much as he can so he can make an informed decision about which is the best tool to complete a task.

In other words, don't choose a platform, OS, programming language, etc. and then ignore the others. It is best to be well-rounded in your skill set.

Answer 6

I agree, you should learn what you want to. Once you have an understanding of Web, then learn some desktop programming to broaden your horizons a bit. You'll never know when you'll need it.

But, also, if you're looking at learning windows desktop development, then you should definitely look at C# and/or VB.NET. The .NET Framework is by far the easiest way to develop desktop app for Windows; much easy than C++ from what I understand (I actually didn't spend much time on C++ myself).

Answer 7

Learning non-web applications will always be useful. There will always be applications that are not suited to be web apps. Even if everything moved to be a web application, the server side code and web browsers still need to be written.

At this point in time, if you're interested in the Windows platform then I would advise looking into C# and WPF. Those technologies are used in both native and web environments.

Answer 8

Web development is all well and good but the majority of systems even if they have a nice web front end still consist primarily below the web level, a bit like an iceberg.

End most web implementations are n-tier in design with the lower levels like data access and integration with peer servers ocurring in non web languages.

As I see it there seems to be one pervasive language that can touch all these levels and than is .Net Framework. Notice I make no specification about c#, vb etc. I consider that to be a matter of taste. However I can't remember seeing an n-tier banking website using php to do the data layer. Nor an online ordering website that would use ruby to talk to its jd edwards server.

This is where the heavyweight languages still pervade and if thats where you want to work then learning the .Net framework in whatever language variant you choose is the way to go.

Answer 9

@Rich Bradshaw,

I think you can get answer on your question by looking at any job seeking site.

what should I learn?

Whatever you like and can bring you enough money.

Answer 10

I believe that the future development model for "Web" applications will more akin to the current model of desktop application development. By which I mean that tomorrow's Web apps won't be HTML/AJAX efforts that are difficult and expensive to maintain, debug and test, they'll instead be developed with compiled languages that target a platform that's already available in the browser. Flash, Silverlight, and (to a lesser degree, it appears) Chrome are the current paragons of this idea.

So maybe it's not such a waste of time to learn those "complex" APIs. My group builds WPF applications and I personally don't find those to be any more complex than the the current crop of HTML/AJAX projects.

Answer 11

Thats a very good question. I know nowadays that most app development that im aware of is web apps. But with languages such as flex , i wouldnt be suprised if the desktop apps came back again.

Answer 12

To be well versed you should do both. Skills in one area may or may not translate into the other very well. The lack of state for example trips up lots of desktop developers when they start building web apps. Of course, your experience may vary

Answer 13

Master one discipline then move to the next one.

I am also at the very infancy of learning business application development. The very step I took was to study database. Majority of the applications in the real world is data-centric. It is good to start with desktop application. Do some drag-and-drop then study the code behind. I am doing the same thing with ASP.NET. I have downloaded tons of starter kits. It all depends on your learning style. For me, I can learn more easily by "learn-by-doing" than by digesting chunk after chunk of set theories. That is why cookbook and headfirst books perfectly work for me.

Answer 14

From your background in languages, I noticed you only mention PHP and C. Neither language is strictly speaking an object-oriented/OO language. You really should learn a traditional OO language like Java or C#, as the majority of jobs are looking for those skills. BTW, read Yegge's advice on what languages a professional developer should learn, and think for yourself about what you should do.

Assuming that you're interested in enterprise application development, I would have to say that that field is transitioning from traditional web development (present stuff from a database on a web page) to rich internet applications (still present data from a database, but the front end begins to approximate a desktop application). Building a rich internet application will require concepts that desktop UI developers have known for a long time. Therefore, I don't think you have to chose between web development and desktop development.

Answer 15

This may get modded down - but I'm going to say it anyway.

You can either program or you can't. About 18 months ago when I was looking for a new job, I was looking at the market and I was doing a lot of .NET but a few places wanted me to do JAVA.

I was doing Web Services, they wanted someone to do other stuff...At the end of the day it came down to this - if you know how to code you know how to code. If you're writing desktop apps right now and say in 6-8 months you want to move to some ASP.NET MVC, you'll be fine.

It may take you a bit of start-up time to learn the syntax and get a feel for some things - but in the end you'll be fine. I say this holds true for all the new languages...Skill is skill

Answer 16

A professional .NET programmer should handle both webform and winform. Even you start from webform, but finally, you will have chance on touch winform. Just like a topic "VB vs C#", you will not see a .net expert talk about that, because finally, you should know both of them.

Answer 17

There will be cases where things beyond the web can be used:

1. Scripting languages/console application - build scripts come to mind here for an example but also writing batch or command files to do simple tasks like handle deployment or to do some other simple task that is likely better done from within a black box rather than manually doing something over and over again.

2. Windows services(WCF) - These are also possibly useful for monitoring things and sending off those, "Server is down!" messages for someone to go and find out what went wrong.

There is also something to be said for middleware and back-end development where one would write web services or handle querying a database or inserting data into a DB that may not be the same of front-end web UI work, just to give a couple of other examples of software development work out there aside from the embedded systems and mobile stuff that is also non-web and non-desktop development in a sense.