I want to build a front end desktop application that will be able to start Windows applications within it, it needs to be able to manipulate file structures.

Any ideas?So you want a GUI shell wrapped around Windows so the user doesnt use the Windows GUI but your own?

C++ would be able to do this. Its quite the project though. LOTS of programming! You would be working with OpenGL probably for your rendering of the GUI. http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/

If wrapped around Windows, it would be part of the startup and so the user would see Windows logo and Windows booting up, and as soon as the startup path triggers, your program would take over full control of the GUI.

Is this what your looking for or are you trying to hide Windows completely, but base it around Windows?

Your also going to be likely tapping into API calls to Windows. http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/207581-intro-to-the-windows-api/

If you dont want to hide the Windows GUI environment the programming would come much easier running your program within a Window with Windows Desktop GUI not hidden. You then wouldnt be having to mess with OpenGL and able to use the IDE such as Visual C++ Studio Express 2013 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44914 in which you can build the layout and add BUTTONS and text boxes and have your code tied to buttons to perform specific tasks as well as information typed into a text box could be part of a search function etc.

Have you programmed in any other languages before or is programming new to you? (This project may be way far and above anything you ever imagined in complexity and time needed to program it all. Not to scare you away, but just the facts. )

My programming in C++ is usually short and sweet programs which sometimes can take a week to create. They are generally less than 20 pages of 8.5x11 when code is printed out. I am not a master of C++ but also not new to it. I took 3 YEARS in college on it ( Intro C++, Intermediate C++, Advanced C++ ) and I dabble in it as a hobby to make small programs to solve needs I have. I started programming in the 1980s with Basic and then dabbled in QBasic, then C, then Visual Basic in the mid 90s, and then took C++ in college because it was considered the harder language not bound to just the Windows platform and C++ would help me better in my career path in which back in the late 1990s I wanted to GET into making Video games and mastering C++ was the ticket to that. However getting into it, I soon REALIZED why game manufacturers have teams of master programmers and graphic artists and computer/network engineers. A game I wanted to make as a project in college that was going to be on the lines of Quake like graphics i was dreaming up I soon realized I dont have the time and knowledge to make this happen before the semester is over, so the game I created called Moon Escape which was a linear progression game of choices, the graphics were that of something you would see on a Shareware DOS title of the 1980s with bitmap manipulation of if the person bushes a button, then load up this next bitmap that shows the change as a result of pushing the button. I got a A+ on my project, but it was almost embarassing showing this very CRUDE game to the class, standing up there with the game shown on the projector on the wall, and another older glass platen projector with code on it to show the class what I used for code and how it affected the game. The professor was very good and didnt say you are crazy to take on such a project, you would sink or swim, and you would know you bit off more than you can chew and adjust and learn from it.It would help if you could explain what you are trying to do in more detail. For Windows your best bet would probably be using .NET with a language like C# or Visual Basic. The free versions of Visual Studio would be good for this. Doing it in raw C++ seems like it would just overcomplicate the issue.What do you mean by "start Windows applications within it"?

Do you mean that it will launch other applications or that those applications will need to somehow be "integrated" into the same program? For example- having multiple programs launch and somehow appear as "tabs" in your program?

"it needs to be able to manipulate file structures" is rather vague. Pretty much all software needs to "manipulate file structures" so I suspect you have more specific "file structures" in mind.

If you just want a launcher interface, that is reasonably straightforward. Most programming languages expose ways of starting and even monitoring launched processes.

In the latter case, where they need to be integrated, that's not reasonably possible without being responsible for the applications themselves and designing them with the "launcher" in mind- eg being a Control or DLL that is interfaced with the Menu/launcher.

Tomwatts,

What they say is true.
Learning a formal computer programming method is not an easy task for anyone.
It takes years of work and the help of others to become skilled.