Programming Languages For X Applications

[schmidtbag]

I'm not sure but I think what the guy is getting at is he thinks writing an entire program from top to bottom in C++ is a pain, because changes to either the OS, the GUI toolkit, the graphical server, or the program itself can end up in a chain reaction of other code that needs to be altered. So, sometimes devs don't feel like working on that and which causes the program to hold back things that depend on it, or in this case, software that it may depend on.


For Linux, it seems the best way to make a program is to code a backed in a language like java or C++ but make a frontend in python, perl or ruby. that way it becomes less of a problem for everyone.


Whether I'm right about what I said or not, I think what this dev said was a little ignorant.

[curaga]

This is rather a matter of taste...

Personally, I like responsive and fast GUIs. If I can get those by writing in C/C++, I will write in those, even if something more fancy would do it in less LOC.

For example, the python GUIs that take three seconds to start and one sec to respond to button presses. The fact they're 1/3th (or whatever) the line count is irrelevant when performance is down the drain.

[uid313]

C is a bitch to code in!

C# and Python is much nicer than C to code in.
Well, Ruby, Perl, and just about anything is nicer than C to code in.

The GNOME guys seem to like Vala.

I wonder if maybe it could be possible with Google's Go programming language to code desktop applications?

[Ex-Cyber]

One thing that he mentions that I think is a good point is that not every GUI app needs to be a big ugly project and sometimes you just want to bang something out. For my money, though, anything in the mainstream of Android or iOS loses out on that axis to Tcl/Tk, where the "Hello, world" app complete with button callback (i.e. not the usual cop-out of using an alert dialog) is:

#!/usr/bin/env wish
button .hello -text "Hello" -command {puts "Hello, world"}
pack .hello

Granted, Tcl is not the best language for business logic, but it's great for bits of of GUI glue.

[LightBit]

What kind of people do you think, actually created computers, the internet and everything else required for you, to write that?

Hint: Not the farmers.

Academic people only talk.

[LightBit]

well, I didn't saw the videos but...everyone who writes a GUI based program in C or C++ should be thrown into a desert, far away from any technology so that he can't do any further damage to humanity.

So which language do you suggest?

[Luke_Wolf]

What kind of people do you think, actually created computers, the internet and everything else required for you, to write that?

Hint: Not the farmers.

Hint: Not the Academics either really


It's the same as it's pretty much always been: Military and Business. NASA by the way does not count as academic because it's primary mission is to develop missles and aircraft for military usage.

[XorEaxEax]

C is a bitch to code in!

Depends on how much hand-holding you need from a language, I doubt anyone finds it the best language for rapid development, for such I personally prefer python (and others will have their own preferences). C's domain is mainly that of offering high performance/level of control together with low resource usage while still being a high-level language.

I wonder if maybe it could be possible with Google's Go programming language to code desktop applications?

Go could certainly be used for desktop applications, there are both winapi and gtk-bindings for it iirc and who knows maybe there will be a Go native toolkit which makes use of some of Go's particular features.

I find that the decisive factor in what makes a good or bad framework lies not in the language used but in how it's organised and it's functionality (although one advantage of a C framework is that practically every other language can use it).

[peperoni]

I don't believe the problems with xorg are because bad programming languages but because unskilled developpers. Most people don't even know how to work with pointers, and the worst is that because of that good developpers are forced to develop in crappy languages, with virtual machines you don't know what they are really doing! Unskilled people shouldn't belong to programming teams as unskilled people aren't allowed to work as surgeons!

Most people don't know how to draw with GDI in Windows, not to mention OpenGL neither Linux, and the worst they don't mind!!! Others relay on drivers to draw with serial printers, they don't know that those printers have their own commands! The most prefer to use crappy libraries to draw charts, they can't even imagine how to draw a chart! Most "developpers" haven't optimized their code in their whole life!

If it takes a developper a week to write a routine and tree hours to another one and they earn almost the same, I think there is somthing wrong in this industry!

[XorEaxEax]

Unskilled people shouldn't belong to programming teams as unskilled people aren't allowed to work as surgeons!

Well to use your analogy, not every doctor needs to know how to do surgery. There is room for programmers who don't know (because they don't need to) about things like pointers or how the computer cpu/memory operates in terms of caches, branches, etc. Most programming done today does not require this level of expertise, obviously it's still good knowledge to have even in very high level languages but it's not a necessity in order to be productive in their domain (usually those providing the frameworks used in these high-level languages will have mitigated such problems as far as they are able to).

If gui app development on X is made easier then that is great, still unlike Massey from this speech I don't think the programming language is a problem as you can use the available X toolkits from just about any language these days, you don't have to use C or C++, you can even combine different languages and use say Python to drive the gui code and call C code for anything that requires performance (should there be a need).

I'd wager that if there is a problem then it is that the toolkit's themselves are perhaps more difficult to use then they would have to be (note, I have very little experience with X toolkits as I haven't done any real gui based programming since my early Windows days which was ages ago), perhaps what we need is another new modern shiny toolkit to rule them all? ;D

As for the speech in question, I did not find it very interesting, basically it can be comprised into Massey saying -'gui apps on the desktop is hard, I believe it has to do with programming languages, we need to make it easier to create gui apps on the desktop because it is in trouble due to competition from mobile/web', followed by -'I have no answers or anything concrete to back my statements with'.