Re: Java Versus gtk

[Gus Koppel <gtk spamkiller bytechase cx>]

Karoliina Salminen wrote:

> I would like to add my opinions and comments to the soup again.
>
> > > | Integrated Developm. Envirs.  | -         | o         | +       
>
> I think the Qt-Designer + KDevelop together is a very good
> development environment. The way of working feels quite the
> same than it felt using Delphi many years ago.

I admit I haven't been tracking recent KDevelop versions. Earlier
versions I tested went into an interesting direction but were far from
i.e. Delphi. One could also add, that QT applications can be developped
using Microsoft Visual or Borland tools. I wasn't working with them + QT
but I suppose they are not well suited to produce portable applications.
I don't know to which extent they support QT either.

On the other hand, there are quite some fully featured Java IDEs, some
of them for free, which certainly support full portability of Java.

To my knowledge, for GTK+ there is currently only Glade. While being a
good tool to design UIs, it's far from being an IDE.

> > > | Complexity / ease to learn    | +         | o         | o       
>
> I think quite the opposite. From these, Java is the most easy to
> learn. In my opinion, Qt has the second place. On the other hand,
> because of long experience with C, I think GTK is not so hard to use
> either.

By this I wasn't referring to the language itself but the GUIs instead.
While Java is relatively easy to learn, learning to program Swing in my
opinion isn't. Furthermore, I believe GTK+ is easier to learn than QT
because there is not quite that huge number of classes and C++-specific
extra behaviour to regard.

> However, I like C++ more than C. I have for example now done a project
> with C that is about 10000 lines long. I think it would have
> been less than 5000 lines long with C++ and would have contained
> a lot less pointers. I was unable to convince
> those decided which language was chosen with my C++ claims.

Besides the fact that you can format C and C++ source in any way you
want so the number of lines is rather arbitrary, I haven't seen such
dramatic examples. Also regard that most accesses to C++ objects are
done technically via pointers as well. Just the notation differs.

> Because I think in C++, for me, C++ is kind of easier allthough
> it requires more thinking than plain C where no thinking is required,
> all time goes to writing the code. C++ requires some design
> work to the class structure that requires understanding what
> is good, elegant and easy to implement.

There are many C programs written in bad (mostly oldish) style indeed.
However, this is not really an attribute of C itself, but rather of many
programmers who learned C either a long time ago or by using tutorials
which were written long times ago. Good C writing style is possible and
GTK+ is a good environment to push it. On the other hand, you certainly
can mess up C++ programs / sources as well.

> The most horrible code I have seen, have been C code where 
> some have tried to make the code look like C++ by using C++ reserved
> words such as this-pointer. I am rather much opposed to that kind
> of writing style. Because of my opinion, our official style guide 
> now states that emulating C++ with C is forbidden.
> In my opinion, it would be a less wrong to do C-like code
> with C++ than to do C++ -like code with C.

While not necessarily good style it may be acceptable for someone who is
used to program C++, or helpful to others who are as well and need to be
able to easily read and understand it.