   Chat Server
  I''m making a chat program that will handle about 400 users at the most on peak days. It''s gonna be installed on a win2k system. I was wondering should i make it a win32 console program or should i give it a GUI? 
  Why do either? If you run a program in the windows subsystem it doesn''t actually need to allocate a window/GUI. See also: Windows service. ;  the ideal setup would be as a Serivce, but it doesn''t need to start that way ... you can make it GUI or console now, just MAKE SURE your gui aspects are clearly layered on top of the central work, that way you can replace it at will ...If you write it this way, then you can take the same chat server heart and pacakge it as:  Console App - great for simple debugging, not good for shipping.  GUI App - harder to build  debug initially, and is less obvious which code is interface and which is work ... but much more acceptable to end user who will have this program running all the time.  Service -  Same amount of work to start with as console version, but runs without the window being present to control it, so then an additional controller front end would be written (which could be console or gui at your choice - or you can write both).  The controller GUI app would be very slightly more work than an integrated GUI front end. ;  oh.. yeah.. forgot about that... that''s how WS_FTP and the other stuff work! anyone have any tutorials or anything? i''m gonna do some research on it and look up the MSDN stuff but i would appreciate any fast info ;  oh yeah, if all they need is to START / STOP / RESTART, then you don''t have to write ANY gui at all if you use a service, the standard service manager will give the system admin control AUTOMATICALLY ;  I was actaully thinking of making a service and letting and admin login and change the settings using a seperate GUI application ;  man.. the .NET stuff are complicated.. anyone know a good place to start learning this .NET? ;  Use java, tcp will probably be able to manage this, but why not use IRC or an IRC mod. ;  Good point... why reinvent the wheel? Surely you can use an existing IRC server daemon (there are soooo many out there that there has to be one that does close to what you want already).Preferably an open source one, then if it doesn''t do what you want, it can be modified so it does.Mark 