Needs Advice on Project-level Stuff

Hello, /prog/

I have a syntactic understanding of C/C++, I'm not bad with Java and I can write PHP fairly well, script-for-script.

I have absolutely no capacity for doing a _project_, though. I really just sit down with no real clue where to begin. Thus, all of my things fail miserably within the first week. I really never know where to start.

I'm reading SICP now, I've never come across it before, and /prog/ seems to treat it as required reading. Should be good.

My predominant issue with C/C++ is that GUIs are hard as fucking hell, as far as I can tell. That's what turns me to Java and PHP.

My current 'project' is a HTTP/HTTPS proxy script in PHP or J2EE (I play around in Oracle lots, and I figure that this may be a useful way to delve into Oracle as well).

I've drawn a few diagrams on my whiteboard about what exactly the program should do, what needs it satisfies and just the general feel of it.

Where do I go from here? Is there a decent, no-crap book that I should look into? I think I have the coding skill to code each necessary function, but I really can't bring it all together.

Cheers /prog/

Learn UML.  Then throw all that UML shit away and retain some of the design concepts.

do what >>2 said

Find IEEE 830-1998 throw all the 830-1998 shit away and retain some of the requirements gathering concepts though it sounds like you might have this part in hand already.

Google search the (Rational) Unified Process.

If you think GUIs in C/C++ are hard (what platform are you using? X? Win32?) you'll find the FORCED OBJECT ORIENTATION OF CODE in Java to be worse.

And GUIs in PHP? That makes no sense.

>>5
What're you on? Java comes with a logical (Well, logical enough...) API for GUI programming. I've used enough Java to know as much. Every attempt I've gone with for C/C++ has ended with failure, predominantly because I can't find a theory, rather than code, oriented way to learn. I got a little bit into GTK+, but outside of tutorials, it crashed and burned.

PHP GUIs are [X]HTML/CSS, which are piss easy to do.

>>6
>PHP GUIs are [X]HTML/CSS, which are piss easy to do.
HURR DURR DURF
PHP (although shit) isn't just a web server language
http://gtk.php.net/
http://uk2.php.net/features.commandline

>>1 use C#/.Net and you'll get your GUI program made FAST.

>>5

OP is talking about APIs not making GUIs.


>>1
Learn Python. Easy to learn, teaches proper programming habits, and, more importantly, is easy.

>>1
Where do I go from here?
You consider that program to be your function main(). Now you have to implement main(). Divide it in a few functions which should be as isolated as possible. Then implement them by subdividing them in a few functions, and so on, until they are trivial.

You will also want to define utility functions that operate with the data kinds you pass from function to function. Note that by kinds I mean either data types, classes, or just a structure you use in a list, a dictionary, or a cudder-based list.

>>4
Ew

>>5
And GUIs in PHP? That makes no sense.
A dynamic HTML webpage is a GUI. It's one of the simplest kinds of GUIs and works wonders for many things.
PHP also has PHP-GTK.

>>9
I agree, OP should learn Python.

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