I'm wanting to write an instant messaging program for a personal project, simular to MSN/ICQ etc.. what would be the best language (and version) to use? i have writen a DOS based FTP download client in ANSI C so know how the low level packets are sent etc..
but thats all! i have't done any programming in windows based languages.

What is a windows based language? You mean like C#? Stay away from C#, just use C++

Just stick to c/c++ as CodeRed said. There are plenty of windows tutorials out there, and most of them are pretty easy to understand if you know c already.

Didn't know that you could send packets with [pure] ANSI C... Always thought you needed something like WinSock or similar (unless you did some fancy assembly stuff).

Cheers,
I'll give it a go in C/C++ first.

Our tutor at University wrote a communications libary that interacts with packet drivers.

well my freind you have to work on both flash 0.5 and java
and when you finish your project tell us

What is flash 0.5? I've never heard of it... Are you referring to Macromedia Flash 5?

Gian.. There's no point in asking. I've asked too, and he just won't reply to the question. Or actually, that was someone called cfc (I think), but it was written exactly like that, so I could get kinda suspecious here. ;)

u should decompile AIM or ICQ... then change the sum shit around... like the GUI and shit

Not only is that illegal, it would be a lot more difficult than writing his own, Since the only decompilers that I know of produce ASM code.

ICQ and AIM now use the same protocol (OSCAR) that he already been reverse engineered and documented (look for the faim project on google). The protocol isn't very simple to use though.

For something like this, I'd definately stray away from C and C++. C wouldn't be all that horrible, considering that's where you have experience already. But creating Windows apps in straight C with Win32 is hell. I also wouldn't use C++, it's a piss-poor excuse for an OO language. Personally, I'd suggest using Smalltalk (http://www.squeak.org). However, Smalltalk is cross platform, and not Windows specific- and as a result, it doesn't have widgets that look native. Which can be a pain if that's what you want. Your app would run without changes under Windows, Mac OS 9, OS X, Linux, Acorn RISC OS, BeOS, EPOC, WinCE... well, you get the idea. Dolphin Smalltalk (http://www.object-arts.com/) is Windows only and uses Windows-native widgets and UI, so that may be something more what you're looking for. It would provide you both with an environment that lets you build apps fast in a very powerful and higher-level language. When I say "higher-level" I don't mean like BASIC. Smalltalk is a full-fledged general purpose language used in a lot of places. It has a GUI builder like VB.

Other than that, for second choices, I'd reccomend Ruby, Perl of Python, all of which have ways to create GUIs under Windows. Some ways, like using the wxWindows library, both use native Windows widgets as well as are cross platform.

/me can feel a flame-cum-high-level-language war coming on.

What? you insult C++? Now you've done it!

<takes some voodoo-stuff and makes a doll of rev, uses spell to shorten arms to about 2cm and poures itching powder on doll>


RedX

"C++ ... is a piss-poor excuse for an OO language"

C++ is and was designed to be a hybrid language, offering you the best of both worlds (procedural and OO)

C++ also does (sort of) generic programming using templates (not very well implemented IMHO, but the best they could do with the contraints of C).

Common-Lisp was designed to be a hybrid language, offering you the best of functional, object oriented, generic, and procedural programming...

And sometimes you maybe want the performance c or c++ provides - which smalltalk and other stuff with virtual machines lack (there's a reason why lots of comercial software is written in c/c++).

Most Common-Lisp compilers compile to machine code. You may also want to look at the declare and proclaim Common-Lisp commands (they let you set how much optimization and type checking you want). A few years back CMUCL actually produced faster code than GCC! (yes, common-lisp programs can be faster than C programs if they are coded well, which isn't as hard as coding a C program well. Just make sure to judiciously use explicitly typed variables and (declare)).