Re: What should I use for a good GUI?

From: Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 08/11/04 

Date: 10 Aug 2004 18:41:05 -0700

visualjp@aol.com (VisualJP) wrote in message news:<20040804102929.16597.00001867@mb-m22.aol.com>...
> First of all, I'm sort of a newbie. I want to write a program that will be
> fairly simple, but I want it to have a nice GUI. I've done some work in C++,
> and I could write this program in there in a day or so, but I've been told that
> C++ stinks for making GUIs.
>
> I've heard Java is better and I've heard that Visual Basic might be good, too.
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
> JP

Visual Basic (.Net or 6) is good, but it creates a product that
assumes a Windows platform. VB-6 is headed for the knacker's yard
while Microsoft is solidly behind .Net.

Currently I am using Eclipse and it is very impressive as a Java based
platform.

The key is not this or that platform, it is instead good separation of
GUI issues from other issues. In Quick Basic I was able to develop a
graphical user interface for showing ship stability by showing the
actual craft as a schema to the mariner simply by refusing to consider
the very idea that it was "not necessary" to develop, in effect, a
GUI.

I am to say the least underwhelmed by the traditional claims of "drag
and drop". This is because in actual praxis, developing large
industrial-strength forms, dragging and dropping is a real drag.

To the manager, it "makes life easier".

But it is news to me that life should be easier. Furthermore, the drag
'n drop philosophy transforms CODING, which is a suitable occupation
IMO for a gentleman and a scholar, into low and mechanical labor,
which is then executable by dull fellows.

It hides opportunities to create visual class factories which can, for
the mandarin programmer, create complex structures without the need
for repetitious labor which dulls the spirit.

The siren song of globalization is "life shall be easier". But if
Hegel is right, man and his humanity is constituted in struggle
individual and collective. Thus we see that PART of the spirit of
"tools" used in an alienated fashion is destructive of the human
spirit.

But I digress. Eclipse is cool.

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