What Language Can Do This?

[iT3d.]

Ive used a program that someone who worked in my new job before had created called ADAM. It's a really long pointless acronym - but essentially, what the program does when ran is cycle through a list of steps, completeing each and gathering info about the system on the backend, before advancing to the next step - with the occasional prompt.

For example, it will prompt and ask if the machine needs antivirus installed - clicking yes initiates an install sequence, clicking no skips and goes to the next step. The program installs a program and then updates it to the latest version before going on to the next step - I want to know what type of program could do this?

Also, throughout the duration of the program completing steps there is a textbox that you cannot interact with that populates itself stating the next step, for ex:

step 1 blahblahblah

then when finished it will say :

step 1 blahblahblah...done
stpe 2 blahblahblah

After all the steps are completed, it goes to a screen with boxes listing all the info collected.
I want to code a modern version of the program for my personal use to make my job as a technician easier, and to show that I can do some programming. I'm not asking for code - just needing to know what language could do this.

[DELOCH]

Many ways to do that, but I would suggest looking into scripting.
some options are Python, Ruby, and Perl.

There could be more specialized tools to get this done, but scripting languages give
you the most leverage over that.

Hopefully this helped
~DELOCH

[KenJackson]

If the application was created by an employee on the job, the source code belongs to the company unless he had an agreement. You should ask around, look around, poke around and try to find it. If you just want to make some changes, that would be the very best place to start, regardless of what language it's written in.

But starting from scratch for something like that would probably best be done in a scripting language as Delloch suggests. Python seems to have taken the world by storm.

But there is one other solution you might consisder: NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System). When you install an application on Windows, you often run setup.exe, which opens a series of standard-looking windows to gather information and guide you through installation. Some of those have no-doubt been created with NSIS. You can make a really nice looking installer with a relatively small script. It's free.

The downside of NSIS is that the language is very non-intuitive, at least I think so, which means a steep learning curve.