Which programming languages meet these criteria for GUI app development? [closed]

Question

I'm trying to find a programming language I feel really comfortable learning and using for desktop/GUI application development. I realize it's unlikely that any language meets ALL of these criteria, but I'd like to find one that meets as many as possible. I've listed the following features ROUGHLY in order from most desirable/important to least.

Ideal Language Features:

• Code Style: C/Java-like
• GUI Development: Easy, elegant, and platform-Native styling
• Community: Widely documented, active development, friendly & helpful, unity of focus
• Object-oriented
• Garbage Collection, no worrying about pointers, etc
• Native compilation, NO 3rd-party runtimes like GTK or .NET
• Multi-platform (can be compiled on *nix, Windows, Mac)
• Reasonably fast
• Mixed typing (soft-typed, OR both soft- and strict-typed -- i.e. Pike)

Background:

Most importantly, I need something that is straight foward and reasonably familiar, and something that isn't going to require a deep understanding of platform-specific APIs. I can't afford to spend a lot of time learning to develop Win32 apps in C++ for example. I've used wxWidgets, and liked the basic usage, but I'm really wanting to use a language with garbage collection, dynamic typing, and so on.

My frustration with Java, C#, and others is the need for a 3rd party runtime. I don't want end users to have to worry about installing and maintaining a separate platform.

Now then. Ideas??

Answer 1

UPDATE:

.NET is finally becoming an open-source, cross-platform solution. .NET Core allows native compilation for multiple devices.

The new .NET experience is exactly what I was looking for when I asked this question several years ago.

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Original:

Lots of good suggestions, despite being salted with negativity throughout.

I think I'm going to go with C# and Mono. I like C# well enough syntactically (I've been accused often of being shallow, but the syntax of a language is just as important to me as its features, because I spend a lot of time writing in that particular syntax). Although similar to Java, it has a few unique features that I appreciate, and I think the community seems more open-minded.

My biggest complaint about Java besides performance, frankly, is the community. It seems infected with an excess of arrogance, and it also seems to be very fragmented in terms of support for and development on various overlapping libraries, tools, and so on. The community surrounding Mono seems much more organized.

Actually, so does .NET itself, for that matter. Sun is a big enterprise company that seems every bit as confused about what it IS and what it DOES as Microsoft or IBM, yet they seem to be doing an even worse job of leading and organizing their platform than Microsoft, which is pretty tragic.

Answer 2

Haha, due to the constraints you imposed you are now left with HTML and javascript. Good luck :)

Answer 3

The answer to your question is simply: None. You excluded all desirable languages and platforms in your question.

I'd suggest you throw away your aversion against .NET and go with Delphi Prism. It's not C#, it is cross-platform compatible (everything is officially supported on Mono) and you can create applications that bring the runtime with them (Mono as part of your application).

Answer 4

I'd suggest Groovy and Griffon. Groovy is a dynamic language (like Ruby / Python) that runs on the JVM and integrates with millions of Java libraries out there easily. Griffon is a high-productivity RAILS-like framework for developing GUIs. Groovy has been around for 5 years and has a robust community and is supported by SpringSource (now division of VMWare). Griffon is a bit younger, but also has a fairly robust community.

These seem to fit your criteria.

I know I switched from Java to Grails (web framework written in Groovy that's similar to Rails), and haven't looked back.

Answer 5

Have you looked at QT? It's a really great GUI library and there are bindings for just about every language in common usage. There is a ton of documentation and a wide community. You mention that you want to do something in a language with garbage collection and dynamic typing, but rule out Python and Ruby, which are the 2 most popular languages that fit this criteria (also, they both have great QT bindings, I use pyQT4 and it is just awesome). They really aren't that far from what you do in Java/C, you just end up writing a lot less.

Answer 6

Wow you really limit your choices. I'm going to jump on the QT bandwagon and recommend C++.

Most of the objects in QT inherit from another object that sort of does it's own garbage collection.

There is incredible documentation out there for it.

QT is extremely powerful and has most of the elements you would like, and is extensible if you want to modify elements yourself.

If you do a static build for your release build the people you give the application to won't need distribute any other libraries as they will all be built into the .exe file.

Answer 7

The next iteration of Delphi is said to be cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). I think it meets all your requirements except garbage collection.

Answer 8

No language meets all of those restrictions. Technically, it sounds like you're asking for something almost identical to Java but then explicitly disallow Java for unstated reasons. Conceptually, it sounds like you're looking for Python or Ruby but disallow them for using slightly different syntax.

Given the order of priorities, I think the closest you'll find in existing languages might be C with the Boehm GC and GTK+ for the GUI (and GLib for the object system). You do say "No GTK" under "No third-party runtime required", but I'm not sure what "runtime" you refer to here, since IIRC it's just a bunch of C libraries.

Given the specificity of the requirements, I think your best bet is to write your own language. Compilers really aren't that hard to write anymore. There are off-the-shelf tools to help with parsing and code generation and math and text processing and GC and so on. Once you get started you'll probably find people willing to help port it. Many existing cross-platform GUI libraries (like wxWidgets) use C/C++ so if you have a decent FFI you can use that, too. You want "support" and "documented" but if you're the primary author you'll understand it better than anybody. The hardest part about a language is design, and it sounds like you have a picture in your head of exactly what the language should be already.

Answer 9

There are a few if you can accept either WxWindows or GTK or QT as a toolkit.

In the order of my personal preference would be:

1. Eiffel Studio
2. D with the D-GTK binding
3. F#

Answer 10

javascript?

might be not the fastest one and doesn't fully address all your needs, but hey... its everywhere and easy to learn

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didn't read after the list, but with prism You can probably achieve most your goals.

or You can try Qt and c++ autopointers

Answer 11

Silverlight could actually give you enough cross-platform availability to use C#/.NET, but I am not sure it fits all your requirements.

Answer 12

Sounds like Action Script 3 will make you happy. But it's more web oriented but you could try to make a projector or an Air application. I think it's a good solution because you can do anything with AS3 (image, video, text, sound video text keyboard and mouse input, pear to pear and 3d since flash 10, ...) and it's cross platform and you can use it on the web or your desktop :)

If you are a pure root coder (using vim and only command line for ex) you can make your whole app without using the flash ide, by just writing your as files and compiling them with mxmlc (that comes with the free flex sdk).

Answer 13

I suggest Python. Although it doesn't fit your first requirement of coding style, but it fits all your other requirements!

• GUI Development: Easy, elegant, and platform-Native styling --> Yes I'd suggest that you try wxPython (wxWidgets for Python). This is so "native" on Python that about 90% of all the wxWidgets code examples on the Internet are for Python! I've personally used TkInter, Gtk and wxPython. All of them are well supported on Python. My personal choice is wx.
• Community: Widely documented, active development, friendly & helpful, unity of focus --> YES
• Object-oriented --> Yes
• Garbage Collection, no worrying about pointers, etc --> Yes
• Native compilation, NO 3rd-party runtimes like GTK or .NET --> Yes. - You can eiter:
  • pack a single dll with your code - or
  • use py2exe which is able to create a single executable out of your project
• Multi-platform (can be compiled on *nix, Windows, Mac) --> Yes.
• Reasonably fast --> Yes. Well, it's not the fastest out there, but close enough that some serious projects are done in Python only.
• Mixed typing (soft-typed, OR both soft- and strict-typed -- i.e. Pike) --> Yes.

Regarding your first requirement I'd say that you should give Python at least a try. It requires very little effort to get started. There is a 2-hour tutorial which gives you a serious introduction. There's a Basic to Advanced tutorial where I'd almost guarantee that you'll be writing your first application on the second day.

Answer 14

I also feel your pain Brian. Most time when I ask questions about desktop GUIs the only answer I get is: "Make it Web". You really nailed it, since your question is still open inspite some really non-constructive answers...

I've been watching closely JavaFX 2, it solves some of Swing problems and seems very promising. This may be the only thing Oracle did right since getting Java from Sun.