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> Also, I heard that there were quite a lot of tech debt in GTK3 and part of the reason why GTK4 came as a bigger update is to fix those GTK 3 itself was tryin
by audidude 3y ago
> Also, I heard that there were quite a lot of tech debt in GTK3 and part of the reason why GTK4 came as a bigger update is to fix those
GTK 3 itself was trying to lose the tech debt of 2.x (which in turn 1.x). But they were still all wrapping a fundamentally crap API of X11 for graphics in this century.
GTK 4 changed that, and it now wraps a Wayland model of API. That drastically simplified GDK, which is why I could write a macOS backend in a couple of weeks.
It also completely changed how we draw. We no longer do immediate mode style (in the form of Cairo) and instead do a retained mode of draw commands. That allows for lots of new things you just couldn't do before with the old drawing model. It will also allow us to do a lot more fun things in the future (like threaded/tiled renderers).
The APIs all over the place were simplified and focused. I can't imagine writing an application the size of GNOME Builder again with anything less than GTK 4.
Hell, last GNOME cycle I rewrote Sysprof from scratch in a couple months, and it's become my co-pilot every day.
- kaba0 3y agoThanks for the comment and for your work!