C++ might be a bit complicated for what you want to do. C++ is one of the most difficult (if not THE most difficult) languages to learn. For rapid application development, look into Visual Basic. It's not nearly as powerful as C++, but is much easier to tackle and gives you the ability to process data, build interfaces, output to and modify data on any of the Microsoft Office platforms. For business and quickly developing apps, VB is the way to go. There is a version of VB built into all MS Office apps called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) which would probably help you with your raffle ticket example through MS Word.