How would you go about writing an application like Foobar2000?

7    07 Jul 2015 16:07 by u/Mother-Fucker

Not much to say in here, but if you were going to build an application like foobar2000, where would you start? Ive recently graduated past the beginner stages of programming, and im basically looking for a larger project to sink my teeth into over the summer, but im not sure on what I should learn. Ive already used JavaFX for a few projects (File transfer and directory navigator server and client, media player, multi user chat client), but unfortunately it is very RAM heavy.

To narrow the question some more, what technologies should I learn in order to start this project; I know I will need to learn C++, but what else?

Heres an image of what the finished product should look like: http://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main-black.png

edit:: I already have experience with C, and am looking to make my media player as lightweight as possible, and cross platform, this is why I chose C++ as opposed to Python, Java, and C#.

3 comments

4 u/Vladar 07 Jul 2015 16:56

Well, C++ is not exactly mandatory. Any language which have needed libraries will do.

Now, libraries — is what important. You surely will need some GUI library, and some media codecs too.

1 u/adnzzzzZ 07 Jul 2015 19:46

You need to break down the project in terms of all libraries you'll need. So, GUI, playing music from files, accessing the file system, playing music from a stream and so on. For the GUI part, if you wanna make it as customizable as foobar's, you wanna make sure the library you use allows for that level of control over its GUI elements. Basically, just think of all the basic elements of the program and try to find some libraries that implement each individual piece. Use whatever language you feel more comfortable with that also has those libraries. And just start researching and trying things out.