A Dev Environment for the Returning Geek?

InsurgentGeek asks: "I'm about 25 years into my career in technology. Over that time, I've done the standard progression from developer to architect to team leader to program leader to business unit leader. While I've stayed up to date on general technology trends (perhaps more than about 95% of my peer group) - I have started to really miss hands on coding - something I haven't done for almost 20 years. It's not for my job, and I don't plan to make any money at it - but I'd like to get back to coding on at least a recreational basis. Here's the rub: what are the right tools?" "'Back in the day...' you had about 2-3 choices of languages and perhaps the same number of OS's. There were not frameworks, API's, development environments, etc. I'd like to pick a toolkit and learn it. My goals are pretty simple: I want to write applications that have a great look & feel that will primarily be pulling information from the web (think weather & news), play with that information and present it in interesting ways. I'd like those applications to be usable on the Linux and perhaps Mac OS X platforms. I'm not a complete non-techie. I use Linux at home, have set up all the toys like Squid and BIND - but this is just administration. I need to get back into the guts of the machine. If you were me where would you start? What language(s) would you want to become conversant in? What do I have to worry about beyond the choice of the language itself? What frameworks? What other tools?"

Comments

Depends on what you want to do

[joib]

My goals are pretty simple: I want to write applications that have a great look & feel that will primarily be pulling information from the web (think weather & news), play with that information and present it in interesting ways. I'd like those applications to be usable on the Linux and perhaps Mac OS X platforms.


In that case I'd recommend something like python combined with some gui toolkit such as wxpython or pygtk.

...into the guts of the machine


Since you're on some unix-like system, you could do worse than plain C and a few books (C:ARM5 by Harbison & Steel and Advanced Programming in the Unix environment by Stevens spring to mind). Some asm knowledge might be useful too.

As for tools, frameworks etc. there is of course an unending list of those. For an IDE, a like emacs code browser.

Re:Plain and simple

[misfit13b]

Note that Express Editions do not allow you to sell or distribute your software...

That's not what I'm reading in the FAQ, question 4.

Can I use Express Editions for commercial use?

Yes, there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using the Express Editions.

Re:Plain and simple

[cursion]

For Mac development, the free XCode tools are good, however I would look into CodeWarrior because ObjectiveC, in my opinion, is an antiquated and bastardized attempt at object orientated programming, CodeWarrior offers C++ access to OSX programming API's.

As nice as it is, you might want to avoid CodeWarrior on Mac - arent they killing this product with the move to Intel?

XCode would be the way to go on a Mac - it handles different languages.