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That ground is mostly unexplored. IMHO, the sane middle ground between Electron and the 70s isn't shoving an entire browser inside a desktop app. It's using mod

by lj3 10y ago

That ground is mostly unexplored. IMHO, the sane middle ground between Electron and the 70s isn't shoving an entire browser inside a desktop app. It's using modern programming and compiler techniques to get close to the metal without having to deal with all of the shortcomings of C/C++. It's also using UI libraries that make creating desktop UIs as easy as making a website, but with better performance. Sadly, neither of the things I mentioned above exist yet. People are working on languages that fit that space, but most of them aren't done yet. Nim is the only one that's officially released. As for desktop UI libraries, your choice these days seem to be between bad and worse. I'm working on my own desktop UI library, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing. It'll be a learning experience, if nothing else.

prewett 10y ago
You would be well-served to use Qt and Cocoa enough to get familiar with them. You may or may not like the language, but the organization and consistency of both are excellent. In particular, QT's signals/slots, naming consistency, and layouts make writing UIs easy without looking at the documentation (once you've used it a bit). Cocoa is well thought out, but a bit dated. (UIKit is not so well thought out, and forces MVC on you, which is often unnecessary and unhelpful, and then it completely botches UITableView by muddling up the M, V, and C. Qt's QTableView is much saner.) Unfortunately, it's also hard to write a UI in code in Cocoa, since you have to write the positioning system yourself due to no layouts. How they handle different screen resolutions is brilliant, though. You might also want your UI library to be cross-platform, which will limit your choice of languages, especially if you ever want to port to mobile.
IshKebab 10y ago
I agree. Something like QML is sort-of what we need, but that is still too closely tied to C++ and not mature enough. I'm hopeful about Go GUIs though. Go is an easy language to use and performant enough for complex GUI apps. Google abandoned gxui but it seems like they are backing Shiny at least a little.

by lj3 10y ago

prewett 10y ago

You would be well-served to use Qt and Cocoa enough to get familiar with them. You may or may not like the language, but the organization and consistency of both are excellent. In particular, QT's signals/slots, naming consistency, and layouts make writing UIs easy without looking at the documentation (once you've used it a bit). Cocoa is well thought out, but a bit dated. (UIKit is not so well thought out, and forces MVC on you, which is often unnecessary and unhelpful, and then it completely botches UITableView by muddling up the M, V, and C. Qt's QTableView is much saner.) Unfortunately, it's also hard to write a UI in code in Cocoa, since you have to write the positioning system yourself due to no layouts. How they handle different screen resolutions is brilliant, though. You might also want your UI library to be cross-platform, which will limit your choice of languages, especially if you ever want to port to mobile.

IshKebab 10y ago

I agree. Something like QML is sort-of what we need, but that is still too closely tied to C++ and not mature enough. I'm hopeful about Go GUIs though. Go is an easy language to use and performant enough for complex GUI apps. Google abandoned gxui but it seems like they are backing Shiny at least a little.