[wx-discuss] aspects of a safe future continued... AT: Stefan Csomor

[myLC at gmx.net]

G'evening, =)


Stefan Csomor wrote:

> ...
> In my eyes wx needs a better ecosystem to thrive. Most of
> the OSS I'm aware of that are broad and healthy over many
> years has either a dual licensing scheme or a big company's
> pockets that support it.
> Unfortunately a few years ago all our dreams about a
> brighter future thanks to Borland crashed on the harsh land
> of reality.

True. As for Borland I think you can safely blame that on MS.
With the rise of Java (mostly due to a media hype rather
than hard facts) and Microsoft picking it up and getting
sued for "adjusting" it (I assume we all know very well
where that would have led), they "had to" create their own
language.
So what is being called "C#" now is actually their Java
mash-up in new glasses.

Microsoft is forcing C# - again, we all know what that
means: if people don't want to use it, Microsoft will change
that by applying "gentle pressure"...
Visual Studio is slowly being stripped from C++ (don't know
if you noticed - being a Mac enthusiast). Features which
make life easier become increasingly "not supported for
C++".
The small glitch of their help center showing you all kinds
of NET/managed stuff when typing in a keyword, even if you
specifically selected only the C++ dominion, seems to be
stable as well.
Bottom line: Borland had to eat it or die.
(Not that I like Borland - actually with BC 5.0<= there was
a short period where I was very close to killing them.;-)

So now you have the same with TurboC++. When I first read
about it in the press I was positively surprised. Then,
after downloading the freaking disk-image, I had to find out
that all of those - positively surprising - nice features
were "not supported for C++"...

Microsoft has learned a great deal from C++. Without a GUI
it doesn't go anywhere... so guess what, they made C# free -
oh, but without the GUI elements, of course.
Now they can sell it as portable, where of course C#/NET
applications created with Visual Studio will only run on
"Microsoft".
It makes live a lot easier for them. They can smoothly oust
competitors (Borland is no such thing - not anymore, it's no
more than a hamster which they feed).

It looks very much like they'll try to port everything to
that (managed code - C#) in the future. Windows-XY, the
X-box and WindowsMobile, all the same. They can pick out the
hardware they want (eventually even creating it themselves)
without feeding competitors whom they currently depend on...

When you look at current ranking and what people "pick up"
for programming, C++ is slowly drifting away.
This is not because it would be a language inferior to Java
or C#, but mostly because there is so little support for it.

Becoming a C++ programmer is A LOT harder than programming
in Java or C#. With Java you simply pick a tool like
Eclipse. Everything is already there, your code gets parsed
in the background while you type, there is a free UML
modeler which creates Java code or the model from Java code
+ many other nifty helpers. 'same for C#. Microsoft's gift-
bag (funny, "Gift" actually means "poison" in GERMan;-)
comes with everything you need.
And C++? It's like you get dropped in the jungle. Find the
machete yourself! Learn to write Makefiles (big fun, you'll
get to hear a different dialect in every corner)...
What - you want a window with a text and maybe even a button
in it? Wait, now that's another story - try looking in
another jungle for that one...


Bottom line, if you want to get companies to support
wxWidgets or whatever could become of it, you might want to
take a look at those which will "not profit" from Microsoft
running their own bakery... ;-)

What is not helpful in that matter is that wxWidgets - as it
is - will be perceived as a dinosaur (preprocessor oriented,
amongst other things). Marketing-wise that's a no-no.
Usually if they support Open Source projects marketing plays
an important role.
Hence it could help if it would be something new, eventually
even involving other "groups".
As previously mentioned I didn't get very far on BOOST with
that one and the GTKmm (rather up-to-date C++) guys will
likely (and understandably) never give up on GTK (which
renders the whole thing barely portable), so I'm somewhat
running out of ideas. X-O


> ... in my view wx needs to trim itself and focus on GUI
> providing wrappers for 'foreign' libraries like curl etc. -
> removing these implementations from our source.

Coming from the Assembler corner (yes, and C++ could be more
efficient - even without loading any of it off on the
programmers) I would be the last to mind. Then again, I just
remembered that I'm not that representative... ;o}



I really shouldn't be posting on weekends. I write fucking
books, sorry! X-Y


Regards,
                                        LC (myLC at gmx.net)



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