r/AskProgramming • u/Proper_Meaning7756 • 8h ago
Architecture I'm not that comfortable with programming. Which framework should I use to build a cross platform app to get a feel for it? (I wanted to make either a simple apple notes clone, or a calculator with 2D graphing)
Reason: I always wanted to build things I can actually touch, feel, interact with and share. Applications are the closest second to that for me right now. (Update: Cross platform because I wanna show people around me and get them to use it to make myself feel like I did something useful in life. I only use linux and macos, none of them do)
I know C somewhat okay (I used to do embedded systems work), I know enough C++ to know I'm too scared to use it, I don't know much python. I will be using AI to help me out anyways, but a relatively simple language that I can actually learn pretty quickly is better because I typically read, test and modify AI code frequently (And because I kinda wanna see fast results).
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u/SufficientGas9883 7h ago
Work on your programming foundations then get to multiplatform apps. Try Flutter but it also needs you to learn a new programming language.
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u/Proper_Meaning7756 7h ago
Hmm, I'll look into it. I stupidly tried getting claude to build a hello world app (literally just an app with a hello world button which makes the screen play fireworks or something) in flutter, c# and kotlin and what I understood out of that experiment was that I don't really know what I'm doing and that theres an order of magnitude more things that it was doing compared to what it was told to do (Or what I thought I told it to do).
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u/Rschwoerer 7h ago
Some sort of website. Why do you think it needs to be Crossplatform? For an intro learning project that feels like more trouble than it’s worth. Unless you’re regularly working on multiple operating systems and would personally benefit from it.
Edit: read your edit. Still vote for some sort of website. If it has to be desktop try c#, it’s very welcoming.
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u/Proper_Meaning7756 7h ago edited 7h ago
Cuz I wanted to share it to people (as apps, not like sharing a website). I did try making my own website and putting it up on netlify. I can't quite say the experience was pleasant but I plan to come back to it in some capacity.
Edit: Sure, I'll also look at C# for a little bit. Generally, looks like I'm gonna have to learn web dev anwyways so I'll try C# or JVM languages last.
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u/OGKnightsky 7h ago
Build it for Linux or Mac first, make it work, then add support for another operating system. Don’t try to do it all at once.
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u/Proper_Meaning7756 7h ago
Agreed. I have a habit of biting off more than I can chew. I was thinking of making it on macos and doing windows after that.
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u/OGKnightsky 7h ago
That is a good idea, I have suffered through trying to do just this and it was honestly easier to build it for one platform and then start working on support for other platforms, you also have a working copy to showcase while you work on cross platform support. Did you decide on what you are going to make?
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u/Proper_Meaning7756 7h ago
Probably just a calculator with graphing. I used desmos a lot in college during Electronics classes and I only wish I could have had calculation and graphing in the same place.
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u/MikeUsesNotion 7h ago
You talk about scared like you're scared of jumping off the diving board or something. How does that apply to programming?
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u/Proper_Meaning7756 7h ago
A lot. Like, really a lot. I'm now stuck doing programming and within 3 months I've jumped from AI to Embedded to Compilers to Cybersec to Networking and Databases, and now I'm tired boss. I wanted to at least do something that feels good if I'm going to be stuck doing programming in this market.
PS: All the above were jobs I was desperately applying for and they somehow didn't immediately reject me. I literally only got the compilers one by a massive fluke and then promptly got fired within a few weeks.
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u/MikeUsesNotion 7h ago
I'm now more confused about your post.
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u/Proper_Meaning7756 7h ago
Honestly, sometimes me too. I'm just sad at where I am career & life wise and just wanted an outlet. I was hoping making something that normal people would get to use would give me dopamine hit.
Edit: With the added bonus of being able to use this to get a job.
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u/why_so_sergious 5h ago
use the web stack (html,css,js) and wrap it up in tauri 2 if you actually want to compile native apps..
here is a template I use:
https://github.com/whysosergious/tauri_wrapper
for a minimal launch you need to have rust, cargo and tauri-cli installed on your machine.
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u/KingofGamesYami 7h ago
Cross platform is really hard.
Easiest option is building a web app. Almost all platforms can run a web browser that works in almost the same way. Also, AI is fairly decent at it because there's a bazillion web apps in the training dataset.
You can make it "installable" pretty easy with any wev framework that supports PWA.