Calling UselessBettor
 

Hey mate, i am going to bite the bullet and try and learn some real programming, from what i have read Python would be the best option, what are your thoughts?

I learn best from seeing examples of what i need to learn, if you have any examples of coding you have done in Python to scrap websites would you be willing to share those to give me a leg up on learning this language?

Good on you for taking the plunge.

If you already automate excel then .Net or C# is probably the most familiar.

Python is good to learn and it is very powerful but can be a bit hard to understand.

I use Java for no other reason then I already knew how to do it when I started coding my horse racing systems.

Unfortunately the Betfair developer forum no longer exists. It had lots of sample code which is now no longer available.

I had a read up on these 2 languages and can see they may be a better choice, .NET came from the old days of basic, i used to code simple race ratings in Qbasic back in the 90s, honestly i would be starting from scratch as what i do in excel is very simple stuff, i suppose i won't know if i like it until i try it, i may call on you again if i get stuck, am sure you could be helpful.

If you are familiar with basic then yes go the .Net/C# route.

A lot of people use python though so there are a large number of examples out there and a lot of libraries to do things. THe problem with ython is between version 2 and 3 there are major differences and code written for 2 doesn't work in 3. For this reason there is almost 2 camps in the python coders and one stays with the old version of it and the others adopt the new version. Can be a nightmare when you are trying to work out why your examples are not working.

Yes i did read that, if i went with Python it would be 3, no point going backwards.

I found this today.
https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/
Seems to be a website that you can choose from many languages, i am installing C#