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0 pointssbergot8y ago0 comments

I hate to be that guy but you are confusing simplicity and familiarity.

> I can't remember a time when I couldn't easily grasp any of Qt, Gtk, whateverTk toolkits in few hours

When I tried those things, I had a hard time making an hello world app in two hours because of dependency/build/tooling issues.

However I was able to grasp angular 2 in two hours probably because I am more familiar with the frontend ecosystem.

It would be like saying that because you knew english & german and was able to quickly learn swedish, you should be able to learn russian easily.

> Not to blame or insult good frontend people here and everywhere, but it feels like en masse they don't understand the programming essence at all. Sorry, but UI development was never HARDER than today. My colleague feels the same, having more than 15 years of html/css/js experience.

15 years ago the js applications were nowhere as complex as they are today. So obviously things are a bit more difficult IF you want a rich application. If you just want to make a simple document you don't need all those librairies.

> We picked Angular2 randomly after few probes and it seems that out project has more quirks, hacks and LoC than if we just coded it in pure js with heavy templating help from e.g. perl backend

This is your first project with a very unfamiliar tech. This was an expected outcome.

> My thoughts are we're throwing it out next week and generate all ui with decent server-side scripts, leaving /js/util.js of 1kloc as a broker and generic table sorter.

And that's a perfectly reasonable option, especially if you don't have someone with more experience in frontend tech to keep things sane.

0 comments

4 comments · 2 top-level

jcelerier8y ago· 2 in thread

> When I tried those things, I had a hard time making an hello world app in two hours because of dependency/build/tooling issues.

I'd be interested to know how you tried.

For instance, for GTK:

https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-getting-started....

For Qt, the IDE itself comes with examples that can be built and run in two clicks.

Or maybe you want to use python ?

  virtualenv --no-site-packages .
  source bin/activate
  pip3 install pyqt5 
  echo "import sys
  from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QPushButton

  if __name__ == '__main__':    
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)

    w = QPushButton('Hello world')
    w.show()
    
    sys.exit(app.exec_())" > main.py
  python3 main.py

I fail to see how this is more complicated than using npm or bower to fetch the relevant libraries.

stuaxo8y ago

It's great that Qt works with virtualenv and pip, Wx does too.

This is a quite recent phenomenon and to be applauded.

Minus sides -

Neither of these work with pypy yet (ideally the bindings would be rewritten using cffi for best benefit).

The downloads on these are quite big, but maybe this isn't the end of the world.

Gtk still doesn't work with pip like that yet.

Pyimgui may be worth a look if you want a small download that works everywhere, though it does look like it's own thing.

wruza8y ago

Our node_modules are 100Mb too, not counting a browser itself. Gtk recently quit building for MSW at all and relies on MSYS2, and it works now via 'gi', like any gir-enabled libraries, no custom wrappers needed. I ran complex Gtk3 Windows widget galleries last month, for Lua and Python at least.

wruza8y ago

Fair points, generally, but LoC and deadline arguments still kicking my ass. I'm counting days, not hours, that we are spending on magic issues instead of programming our direct business. No rant, I have an example right before me.

Our CEO, also programmer in distant past, took his macbook, asked me "where do I get Xcode", and in his free time did anything we did in web, including animations, itunes-like header/progress area, etc. With my "intensive kickstart", obviously, but the shocking fact is that he never touched Objective-C, Cocoa, AppKit and HTTP. Never. In. His. Life. (Though he has very strong background of sockets, threads, C, widget frameworks, coreutils, evaluation models and general software engineering). It took about a week or two in between of management and negotiations to simply write that thing by all canons.

I don't think we'll hire another frontend master on the middle of the road anyway, but that has something to do with complexity, not competence.

(Fun thing, he started with Swift but quickly "downgraded" to Objective-C, because Swift was getting in his way too much with no clear benefit.)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

4 comments · 2 top-level

jcelerier8y ago· 2 in thread

> When I tried those things, I had a hard time making an hello world app in two hours because of dependency/build/tooling issues.

I'd be interested to know how you tried.

For instance, for GTK:

https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-getting-started....

For Qt, the IDE itself comes with examples that can be built and run in two clicks.

Or maybe you want to use python ?

  virtualenv --no-site-packages .
  source bin/activate
  pip3 install pyqt5 
  echo "import sys
  from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QPushButton

  if __name__ == '__main__':    
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)

    w = QPushButton('Hello world')
    w.show()
    
    sys.exit(app.exec_())" > main.py
  python3 main.py

I fail to see how this is more complicated than using npm or bower to fetch the relevant libraries.

stuaxo8y ago

It's great that Qt works with virtualenv and pip, Wx does too.

This is a quite recent phenomenon and to be applauded.

Minus sides -

Neither of these work with pypy yet (ideally the bindings would be rewritten using cffi for best benefit).

The downloads on these are quite big, but maybe this isn't the end of the world.

Gtk still doesn't work with pip like that yet.

Pyimgui may be worth a look if you want a small download that works everywhere, though it does look like it's own thing.

wruza8y ago

I don't think we'll hire another frontend master on the middle of the road anyway, but that has something to do with complexity, not competence.

(Fun thing, he started with Swift but quickly "downgraded" to Objective-C, because Swift was getting in his way too much with no clear benefit.)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse