Choosing your programming language

The only requirement of a client language is that it can communicate using TCP/IP sockets. This does rule out some languages.

Beginners are probably best off with Microsoft Visual Basic.

Intermediate programmers might like to consider Visual Basic or C++.

C++ is harder to learn but gives you full control over the system; it's also enormously powerful. The programming skills you develop will be useful in many different situations. C++ is the closest to the world standard for 'real' programming; knowing C++ and Windows programming will make you sought after. I quite like Microsoft's C++ development environment, but it is something of a mixed blessing; you can do a lot very quickly, but it does hide some of the details from you (which, depending on your perspective, is a convenient or a confusing thing). It's also cheap, with an academic licensing system.

One other possibility is Perl, a language originally designed for scripting and text processing. It looks pretty obscure at first glance, but half an hour with a book like Learning Perl (Schwartz & Christiansen) should give you all you need to write effective programs. The Perl compiler/interpreter for Windows is free.

Expert programmers don't need to be told. For your information, the server and test client were written using Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 using Winsock. The server runs off a single timer that polls at 1 ms (or as close to that as the system can manage); when the server receives this message, it polls its digital I/O boards and checks if any timer events need servicing. All other events are triggered through the Windows or sockets communications system.