Best GUI programming/scripting system?

Ken g6 · 01-15-2013, 05:30 PM

To go along with the Best Programming and Scripting Language thread, I'd like to know what everyone uses to create GUIs. This is for Windows or cross-platform desktop applications; I'd like to specifically exclude web apps.

I've personally only had success with two GUI platforms aside from web apps: Visual Basic 3.0 and Java. I think I succeeded with Java where I failed with other systems because I need:

- Control documentation: What are the various control objects and how do I use them? Java has very good Javadocs. VB3 had paper manuals.

- Layout documentation: How do you get control X to appear above control Y? What if the user resizes the window? Java has several layout forms you can use. They're kind of similar to the HTML DOM, but less complicated. VB3 had a drag-and-drop GUI layout system - simple, but inflexible.

So what do you all use? Or is everyone in here a command-line-only or web programmer?

Also, is there any particular programming language you use with your favorite API? Or is it language-agnostic?

purbeast0 · 01-15-2013, 06:40 PM

out all of those i've actually only used swing, so i'd have to say swing.

i do hate using gui builders though. only like building from scratch.

wrosecrans · 01-15-2013, 07:46 PM

Check out Qt. The documentation is solid, the layout system is much more practical that Swing, and much easier to make use of than Win32. IMHO, stick with the classic "Widgets" system rather than focusing on the new QML stuff for doing Desktop apps. It's not as modern, but for normal GUI apps where you don't need wacky richness animating all over everything, it's quite useful.

postmortemIA · 01-15-2013, 07:51 PM

Yep, after dealing with managed stuff, Qt appears to be the most balanced option. It is not managed, so it is possible to write well performing applications. Since it has been around for long time, it has matured well. Provided libraries and documentation cover pretty much anything developer would need.

Jodell88 · 01-15-2013, 08:21 PM

I vote for QT as well. While most of the applications I use on a daily basis use GTK, I can never get my head around it.

Leros · 01-15-2013, 11:28 PM

I've only used Java and C# for creating desktop GUIs. I very much preferred using C# with WPF and XAML.

The last real desktop program I wrote used a mix of C# and Java. C# for the UI and Java for everything else.

Munashiimaru · 01-16-2013, 09:22 AM

I like c# (.net) a lot. Similar syntax to java (I like most of the differences a little better), but much better IDE (VS vs Eclipse/Netbeans), slightly better underlying framework, at least as good internal documentation, and decent external (MSDN library is a little worse than java's API documention in my opinion although it tries to be more fleshed out so sometimes it can be more useful). I despise working with any sort of VB.

Only problem is windows only.

Most of my work is web apps, but I've done some windows gui stuff in the past.

nikomaster · 01-17-2013, 09:36 PM

I was a Visual C programmer, but migrated to Qt I feel in love with it. Amazing frame work, fast and easy to learn.

Ken g6 · 01-17-2013, 10:44 PM

Huh, Qt would probably have been my last choice. I'd never really looked into it - I guess because it was made by a company named Trolltech. But it sure does look nice. Thanks!

mv2devnull · 01-18-2013, 01:56 AM

They were Norwegian, and thus refer to Norse mythology rather than forum users.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll

I'm biased, because Qt is the only toolkit that I have used for GUI; I was working in a project that had to compile on IRIX, Linux, Windows, and Mac. Qt had been chosen early on, before it had any IDE integration, UI-designer, etc.