Visual Studio: C and C++, part 1 of 8

There are so many computer languages, especially for the citizen scientist.  From FORTRAN to MatLab to Wolfram to Microsoft Machine Language to C to Node.js.  How to get started with science that uses computational power to solve problems.  This is different than computer science, as a scientist you are not interested in complex or hard to maintain software.  Fancy user interfaces that look elegant but are confusing aren't for you.

Jeremy Foster has challenged me to create a FORTRAN Bot that uses Skype. An interesting challenge. One that I accept. It won't be easy, the last time I used FORTRAN was in the days of DOS on the PC and it was UNIX based. Windows 3.1 was a thing. But ok, I am going to stand up a FORTRAN server, and see what happens. After I complete my C and C++ plans, which may take quite a few weeks, so be patient.

Intel has challenged me to actually use the Intel XDK, which is a great tool, but it only uses JavaScript. Fine by me, because you got to know javascript these days. So we will also look at ECMAScript, which is the basis of Node.js, etc.

So being focused on ancient languages like C++ and C is difficult in this atmosphere. But I will persevere.

What about interfaces, you do need interfaces, and the beautiful user interfaces that XAML offers even the busy citizen scientist is exceptional where you use the graphics on board the local machine, from a Jumbotron to the Raspberry Pi I can run XAML. Or generate your web pages can be an unique but consistent interface using ASP.NET. But there are so many interesting tools like Web Express.

Here is a the first video of 8 parts (so I have seven to go!):