GXUI: A New Cross-Platform UI Library By Google

[goTouch]

As if. C# has a more solid position than ever before, and is poised to consume what were previously Java strongholds. The reality is that until Go, Rust, D, whatever has some major application written in it, then it's doomed to forever sit in the shadows. It doesn't matter how wonderful you think the language is, how innovative it might be, or if everyone switching to it would make the world a better, faster, more concurrent place. Unless someone is actually using it for important things it might as well not exist.

C#? What serious software in C# launches and runs fast enough even on modern PC?

[cb88]

Every toolkit and library update has overall gotten more bloated and slower since RedHat 6 which was probably the peak. RH 6.2 would run on 50Mhz +64Mb ram boxes like a charm. Redhat 7 was a complete slug on the same boxes with extreme lag. Everything after that has gotten even slower and worse... it is complete madness that opengl is now required to "accelerate" the UI. Haiku OS a part time effort of a group of BeOS users is mostly software rendered and often beats out hardware accelerated desktops in responsiveness because there is no CPU<->GPU latency or overhead.

Nothing significant user interface wise has been added IMO in recent years....sadly even Enlightenment is getting prett bloated. Sure you can do all the wobbly etc.. which I like acutally but there isn't any reason the toolkits couldn't remain lightweigh while offering those features.

The only holdout is FLTK and it isn't as featureful as GTK was back then...

[Luke_Wolf]

C#? What serious software in C# launches and runs fast enough even on modern PC?

Oh... I dunno a significant chunk of the web built on ASP.NET, lots of enterprise LOB applications, PS Vita games, various PC games including the well acclaimed Dust: An Elysian Tail, most of the applications in the Windows Store are written in C#, the list goes on and on. The only areas that C# isn't used is in the high performance sphere which is the stronghold of C and C++, and the scientific community which is the stronghold of Fortran, Python, Matlab and the like. Otherwise C# is even at the forefront of Microsoft's embedded push and has been since they were first pushing IoT with the SPOT technologies, and R&D OS development with the likes of Singularity/Midori.

[bnolsen]

The only holdout is FLTK and it isn't as featureful as GTK was back then...

I wrote a layout engine for fltk2 to remove any use of hard coded sizes and coordonates a while back (fltkl i think). I've been meaning to port/fork fltk2 over to use sdl2 as the backend, just need money and time (as usual).

gtk isn't so great cross platform and qt is definitely bloated. has serious problems with non orthogonality and definitely has plenty of surprises if you try to dig into it.

it's been a while since I tested but a few years back qt4 took 40 mins to compile. fltk2 compiles in 8 seconds flat on my dev machine, libraries, utilities, test programs and all.

gxgui will take some reading to see if they have any cool new enlightened ways of doing that boring gui thing no one ever seems to get right.

[staalmannen]

Plan9

I am curious to see of this gui toolkit will work on the Plan9 port of go. The go language has obvious roots in Plan9 ( original inventors, plan9 c dialect, ken c compiler, ...).

I have a strong suspicion that if there ever will be a version 5 Plan9, it will be based on go

[Luke_Wolf]

I wrote a layout engine for fltk2 to remove any use of hard coded sizes and coordonates a while back (fltkl i think). I've been meaning to port/fork fltk2 over to use sdl2 as the backend, just need money and time (as usual).

gtk isn't so great cross platform and qt is definitely bloated. has serious problems with non orthogonality and definitely has plenty of surprises if you try to dig into it.

it's been a while since I tested but a few years back qt4 took 40 mins to compile. fltk2 compiles in 8 seconds flat on my dev machine, libraries, utilities, test programs and all.

gxgui will take some reading to see if they have any cool new enlightened ways of doing that boring gui thing no one ever seems to get right.

Well... Qt is far more than just a GUI toolkit, it's effectively equivalent to the .NET Framework or the Java Platform libraries. It's a framework which you can build applications in, so comparing the two is pointless.

[geearf]

Please tell me this is gonna compete with Qt and GTK (and WPF)... I hate Qt and GTK, I hate them so fucking much! (GTK is ugly and outdated, Qt is pretty, but slow and a hardcore pain in the ass to learn and code in)

I am not sure what you are talking about,
QML is pretty easy.

[geearf]

The only areas that C# isn't used is in the high performance sphere

Actually, some of the Microsoft distributed systems are also, at least part of, in C#.

[mike4]

Actually, some of the Microsoft distributed systems are also, at least part of, in C#.

For example?

Probably Google is trying to leave Java on Android? Would make sense, also Java is slow as a turtle and C# is not much better.

[aksdb]

I am looking for a starter language for kids to learn some programming like the old 'logo' language.

If this is easy to learn, and contains enough gadgets to develop GUI apps quickly on Linux, Android, and Windows, it could fly and eat into Microsoft Visual Studio world.

Watch out, Redmond.

Then simply look at http://www.lazarus-ide.org . (There are also two other distributions that contain some cross compile utilities to directly get you running when developing for a bunch of platforms. Namely http://www.getlazarus.org and Codetyphon.)