I have been wanting to make a program that will end eBay auctions for me. What I want the program to do is end an auction if it is not above a certain price near the end of the auction. I am lost as where to begin on writing this program. I have limited programming knowlede. Most of the programming I have done has been in VB. I am now using Linux so VB programming is out of the question for me. I am planning to learn C++, Java, and PHP languages. Please point me in the right direction for which language I should use and some of the syntax for that program that will be needed for that program. I think this program should be fairly easy to write. It will need to acquire the ending time of the auction, the going price of the auction near the last ten minutes of the auction, then calculate if the auction is going for enough money according to the users input, and end the auction if needed. I think the most complicated part of the program is ending the auction, obtaining the bid price and auction end time. Any help you could give me for writing this will be appreciated.

For this simple project, I would reccomend waiting on the C++ front. Try some of the simpler languages (remember that javascript and java are similar but different)
Java is a good one if you plan to distribute ove the internet, as you don't need a differnt compile for each architecture.

good luck!

quick note: what are the ethics of this? what about the bid just before the auction ends annoyances?

have fun

titanium_geek