wxC & wxD

[Anders F Björklund]

Gour wrote:
>> All four of those are well supported toolkits, _upstream_ that is.
>> Either GUI should do the trick for writing a desktop application.
>
> Upstream was never meant as part of the problem which is on the D-side.
> :-)

True that. I suppose that part of the problem is that C++ doesn't link
with anything else, unless you bother to do an extern "C" interface ?

>> But even if Phobos/Deimos would have something like Tk (or FLTK)
>> integrated, it probably wouldn't be accepted as a real solution.
>
> Right.
>
>> That is, just for being too ugly or too grey or something similar.
>
> Or too light perhaps. ;)

That part I'm not so sure about, both toolkits have tons of widgets.
At least when compared to something homegrown and language-specific ?

>> Now, why would you want to use D as your language(s) rather than
>> C, Python, Java ? Or even C++. That was the real question for me.
>
> Because I want to work on open-source project in my spare time and that
> should have some component of 'fun'...C&  C++ are not falling into that
> category, I don't know nor like Java, not inspired about Lisp-languages,
> Haskell is too-theoretical...which leaves me with the Python, but I find
> D as sweet spot between scripting languages&  C(++). Moreover, it will
> be bigger project which would need longer maintainance and we believe
> that although D is not maybe completely ready today, it will be soon
> enough, so we can start working by writing non-GUI libs for the project.

Right. I guess some of that sweetness faded with moving to D1/Tango
and then to D2/Phobos. Or when the GDC project needed more maintenance.

Both problems were fixable (and fixed), just added to the resistance.
And if there's too much effort in practice, then it stops being fun...

But I think that the effort _was_ successful, there was an open source
DMD (GDC), GUI (wxWidgets) and IDE (Code::Blocks) released for D(1) ?

Something more is needed, but what it would be and what it will look
like I don't know. Probably something more close to the new language.

>> There has to be enough advantages to overcome the shortcomings,
>> which in the end wasn't true when making desktop apps (or games).
>
> "De gustibus non est disputandum..."

Or maybe it just doesn't have the same shine that it did, 5 years ago.

--anders