From web programming to embedded systems (Windows CE), best learning path?

Question

(tl;dr: What's the best learning path to go from PHP/Python web development to application development for Windows CE?)

I'm a self-taught programmer, and I tend to learn by starting from the goal and researching backwards until I get to a point I know. However, I now have a project involving barcode scanners on a pocket-pc, and I'm at a loss.

I know PHP and Python, a little Ruby... I've only ever done web programming. I made a desktop app once, but that was way back in my "Everything in one file" phase. I learned a little C from some video tutorials, but never got farther than "gcc -o sudoku sudoku.c"

So, I know my end goal (upload barcode + form data to central SQL database), but I can't seem to work my way backwards to a point I can start from.

Answer 1

The road is long, but you can break it down into several phases.

• Start with C and C++ 101, which is usually simple console-driven stuff so you can get the hang of the language constructs, ANSI C library and so forth.
• At some point you probably want to learn how to write Makefiles to take the pain out of compiling large applications. (You may not need to, if all your work will involve an IDE, but knowing how different compilation units interact is a good skill to have.)
• You will need to learn about structs and (if you will be using C++) classes.
• Familiarity with the sorts of building blocks you will need to solve your problem will be very useful before you actually try to solve it. You will need at least the platform UI API, something to wrangle barcodes, perhaps a canned library to handle form data, and a way to connect and talk to the database.

Finally, you will be ready to start thinking about how you will solve your actual problem. The general rule is to break it down into its high-level component parts, then keep breaking each of those down until they become tractable. Good luck!