A desktop application developer is a programmer who writes code for software applications that run natively on operating systems like macOS, Windows, and Linux, and don’t need to be connected to the internet. In this course we will be building desktop applications using Python, Java and C#. Python is an interpreted, object-oriented, high-level programming language with dynamic semantics. Its high-level built in data structures, combined with dynamic typing and dynamic binding, make it very attractive for Rapid Application Development, as well as for use as a scripting or glue language to connect existing components together. Python’s simple, easy to learn syntax emphasizes readability and therefore reduces the cost of program maintenance. Python supports modules and packages, which encourages program modularity and code reuse. The Python interpreter and the extensive standard library are available in source or binary form without charge for all major platforms, and can be freely distributed. Tkinter is the standard GUI library for Python. Python when combined with Tkinter provides a fast and easy way to create GUI Desktop applicationsJava is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacentres, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere. Java applications generally contain many mini programs with various functions. Some mini programs have a graphical user interface (GUI), if only a simple window or dialog box, and many mini programs have no GUI. The application itself, however, is likely to have a main GUI that consists of menus, buttons, tool bars, text fields, and other graphical features. The GUI is mainly for user input, whether the user clicks a button or types in information, and a GUI can provide the user with additional information. In addition, GUI components often display information back to the user. To create the GUI, you use the Java Foundation Classes/Swing (JFC/Swing) and Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) API. The many classes and interfaces in those packages allow you to easily create buttons, check-box objects, text fields, and other components, as well as components to organize them. By far the easiest way to create the frame and all the GUI components for your application is to use an integrated development environment (IDE), such as the NetBeans IDE. This IDE allows you to drag and drop your components into place while it writes the complex component code for you. C# (pronounced “See Sharp”) is a modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# enables developers to build many types of secure and robust applicationsC# Windows Forms is a UI framework for building Windows desktop apps. It provides one of the most productive ways to create desktop apps based on the visual designer provided in Visual Studio. Functionality such as drag-and-drop placement of visual controls makes it easy to build desktop apps.
