Can I program this myself? How to start?

Factual Questions
1

I would like to create a program that illustrates the economics of certain types of partnership arrangements. I want the user to be able to change certain inputs using toggle switches and slider buttons in a graphic interface(eg, to change the amount of something on a pre-defined scale), and I want the output to be some graphs and lists of numbers (generally representing cash distributed and income allocated to each partner each year).

I would want the program to live on a website and be usably by visitors.

I’m a relatively smart guy with no computer programming experience (but I’m decent in Excel).

Is there some user-friendly program I can use to accomplish this? I don’t think Excel would work because it lacks a graphical user interface and I couldn’t put it on a website.

Or, more broadly, how should I go about creating this? I’m thinking about hiring someone on one of those pay-per-task type sites–any idea how much that would run?

2

I did this kind of thing–control panels, outputs, and stuff in the middle–in Labview, but that was a while ago and I have no idea what Labview’s web capabilities are now. (The stuff in the middle was electronic test equipment.)

Labview is, or was at the time, very expensive as well. I’m sure there are newer tools that are free or inexpensive that cam be used to do the same.

It was relatively easy to do though.

3

Well, this is what Flash was made for.
But, I wouldn’t recommend Flash - HTML5 is the way to go.

4

Ok, so how do I get started programming in HTML5? And can a regular schmoe figure it out, or does it require the ability to actually write programs from the ground up?

5

If you aren’t opposed to Microsoft, you should take a look at this free product from MS.
I haven’t played with it since I am using MS’s full development tools at work. However, it will get you started for free.

6

Thanks FP, I’ll look into that some, but it looks like it may be a bit advanced for me.

I’m thinking about just doing it through work and trying to get an IT person to help out, but I want it to be MINE MINE MINE dammit. :smiley: (Not that it would be worth anything to sell, I would just want to be able to take it with me if I ever leave my firm.)

7

A regular schmoe has the ability to write programs from the ground up.

8

Check this site out, play their little programming game Learn to Code - for Free | Codecademy

I dont know if it is a language you want, but it is quite simple from what Ive seen.

9

There would be a surprising number of moving parts in a web page like that. I think it’d be quite difficult for a newbie to do it unless…

… if you could find a programmer friend to get you started, you could copy paste your way to something that works well enough to use.

One thing that will make a difference: whether you need the web page to “talk back” to a database or other information stored on a server. If not, a simple web page with some html and javascript would probably do it. A smart guy who knows excel could probably figure his way through it but he’d find it frustrating as hell, I expect.

10

Back when I was doing computer systems, one of the hardest & most time-consuming parts was getting the users to actually tell us what they wanted the system to do – how reports/screens should look, and how it should work, etc. They seemed to have a hard time describing that clearly, and our systems people were good at dealing with machines but not so good at dealing with people to get this information.

But in this case, you seem to have that all figured out: what the screens should look like, what inputs they should accept, how they change based on those inputs, and how outputs are displayed. So that’s a big part of the work (and the part most programmers dislike). So now it should be pretty easy to find a programmer who can take that information an produce this system for you. Probably easier than trying to learn to program it yourself.

11

I have a system which lets you graph various types of data against each other, and displays the results in a variety of relatively simple graphical formats. I used mostly Perl, with the Perl graph package which is fairly to use (if limited) and a few html buttons. But it is probably a bit too hard for a novice. Javascript is probably a better choice, except for the graphs, but is even harder to pick up.

The best thing to do would be to search for some free packages, like R, which might have most of the features you need. I don’t know about the input part, but I think it can do the model and the output. But there is probably something better out there.