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But the problem here is not the suitability of languages themselves, the problem is the huge undertaking required to build a gui library which can compete with
by RX14 10y ago
But the problem here is not the suitability of languages themselves, the problem is the huge undertaking required to build a gui library which can compete with Qt, gtk etc.
Crystal at the very least has good support for binding C so maybe this will be the language which finally produces a modern gui toolkit, but with the move towards web apps its becoming increasingly unlikely.
- gravypod 10y agoIt's a huge undertaking because it's an undefined specification. No one really knows what a cross-platform UI library should look like. How do you follow all of the native app standards automatically? How do you handle updates and distrabution?
- coldtea 10y ago>But the problem here is not the suitability of languages themselves, the problem is the huge undertaking required to build a gui library which can compete with Qt, gtk etc. Well, the whole Cocoa/QT/WinForms scope might be huge, but we don't even have good minimal UI libs -- e.g. with just the few basic widgets: buttons, text fields, labels, radio buttons, checkboxes, kind of what HTML forms can do -- and only very limited functionality (e.g. no fancy text formatting in the labels or whatever). Tons of programs could be GUI-fied with just the above (sort of what Tk does, but decent looking).
- RX14 10y agoLibui, which was on hn a while ago, looks like the basic minimal cross-platform gui library to me. And that's already got bindings to crystal.. I think most developers are searching for something more.
- coldtea 10y agoYep, something exactly like that, with good documentation, and bindings for multiple languages, can go a very long way for lots of apps.