Noob has a particular project in mind, would like some direction.

[Ape]

Hi,

I am aware you must get this often, people wishing to receive some kind of panacea enabling them to fulfil and un-realistic pipe-dream.

I have a project I wish to work on during the summer purely for the fun of it and the hope of learning a few things along the way. I am not focusing on becoming insanely skilled or even moderately skilled, just to have fun whilst messing around with an idea I have. I am not even out to learn 'programming' per se but to learn what is necessary on the way to achieving this isolated goal, although I realise that might be a large amount of stuff.

To summarise I thought it would be interesting if I could make an application with a gui which would assign a musical note pitch to each letter of the alphabet and then be able to paste a sentence in and have a sound file generated as a result. Perhaps allowing for more sophisticated parameters such as a repeated letter results in the sound being held longer rather than merely repeated, or even common sounds 'th' 'ph' etc being two notes played at the same time etc.

I have no idea really how to start this, and appreciate that it is probably a lot harder than I can even imagine at this point. Nevertheless, I would like to know of a programming language or another path in which to pursue that would allow me to meet these objectives in a less difficult manner than others. I would also like reference to a useful resource you know of that serves as a learning tool, a text-book or web series so that I can try and teach myself.

I feel I must re-iterate that as much as I appreciate input on your perceived difficulty of the task, I am really only out for some fun and to maybe increase my knowledge of how this kind of stuff works along the way, even if it falls flat on its face and never materialises into anything more than a mess haha.

[dargueta]

What operating system do you want this for?

[Ape]

Windows preferably. Altghough I am lead to believe that if Java was used it (assuming it is suited to this kind of task) it could be used on mac, linux etc as well, is this correct?

But yes windows would be the operating system of choice.

[WingedPanther]

Java is, by nature, cross-platform. Several C++ GUI libraries are as well.

[dargueta]

Considering you don't need speed for this, I'd go with Java. Do you speak Java?

[Ape]

No I don't unfortunately. I don't know any programming languages at all at this moment in time. That's why I'm aware that it's a big task to go from zero to this project I have in mind. Maybe at least having something to aim for will help in the learning process....

[dargueta]

Oooh, no no no no no. I don't want to be mean, but this is not something you want to be thinking about right now if you've never programmed. Work on learning a language first, and then come up with projects that are at your level. This is really ambitious for someone who's never programmed before. I suggest you start learning Java, as it's essentially C++ with its balls cut off and one hand tied behind its back.

[WingedPanther]

Or, to state dargueta's point a different way, I'm pretty comfortable with several languages, and can see this as being a challenge. Probably not too bad if I stop and think about it carefully, but there are a variety of issues that are potentially involved, depending on how low-level you approach this. You definitely want to be pretty comfortable with your language of choice BEFORE you tackle this.

[dargueta]

Yes, that was more tactfully put.

[Ape]

Ok guys, I realised that what I had in mind would be difficult beyond my comprehension, but with your honest fears about the difficulty of this and my current lame-ness I will try and re juggle my priorities.

I will still try and pursue Java and select that as the first one I attempt to learn. Maybe one day in the future I will be able to return to this.

Thanks again for your help.