Pointers towards developing a quick and dirty business app.
Some people have approached me lately about creating a business app for them (I'm a computer tech student specializing in programming, with a bit of experience in systems and driver programming) and it does sound simple, but I don't really have much of an idea how or where to start.

Are there any APIs that would make creating such an application much faster and easier? Platform isn't really an issue. I have a Mac, a Windows PC, and I am somewhat well-versed in linux in general, and the client will move to a platform of my choice.

I know very little MySQL, I know Objective C, C and a few others, but building a database product this way seems like a very complicated endeavour considering that a large amount of the code I'll be writing has probably been written before and by better programmers than I.
Pointers towards developing a quick and dirty business app.
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Some people have approached me lately about creating a business app for them (I'm a computer tech student specializing in programming, with a bit of experience in systems and driver programming) and it does sound simple, but I don't really have much of an idea how or where to start.

Are there any APIs that would make creating such an application much faster and easier? Platform isn't really an issue. I have a Mac, a Windows PC, and I am somewhat well-versed in linux in general, and the client will move to a platform of my choice.

I know very little MySQL, I know Objective C, C and a few others, but building a database product this way seems like a very complicated endeavour considering that a large amount of the code I'll be writing has probably been written before and by better programmers than I.