What Language And Environment To Use For Simple Cross Platform Program/App?

[Norbert 145]

Can you advise me? I want to program an simple app. In the distant past I would have used Visual Basic but that seems to have been discontinued. Speed is not important as all it does is choose  text from a list and concatenate bits.

So I need to choose a language and an environment to do it in. Ideally the environment would run on Windows but produce a Windows, Android and iPad version with minimal fiddling. If I was able to design the finished App visually then all the better.

Any recommendations?

[Norbert 145]

Further to the above, I spent the last few hours looking for a solution and have settled for now on learning Python in PyCharm Edu Edition.

 

I can see that I will be able to write the code within a day or so but the production of the compiled standalone programs is still unclear.

 

Will I have to paste my code into a separate IDE for each platform? Are any of them 'visual' like Visual Basic used to be? i.e. dragging buttons and text about.

 

Thanks

 

 

[the_bloke 17]

Python is great. You have to use something like Pythonista or PyMob to get Python code to work on iOS though and you'll still need a Mac and XCode to actually compile the ported code into an app to copy to the iPad using iTunes. Unless you really really need your little app on an iPad, I wouldn't bother with the hassle.

[andysm 17]

Javascript, and run it in a web browser?

[Guest]

Depends what you want. As @andysm says, plenty of web frameworks around and you could build a PWA which would work on anything pretty much.

[Norbert 145]

Thanks for the advice, I’ll leave out the iPad version as the phone (Android) version would be more useful anyway.

 

As for the PC version can you tell me more about running it in a web browser? If I wanted to send my program to someone else what type of file would I send?

 

I don’t want to host stuff or get a website, I like the idea of a single EXE that I can email to people. Am I living in the past?

[Guest]

Yes, you're living in the past. 

 

What is it you want to build?