<html>
<head>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
About six months ago I move from OS X development to linux. I am
retired and on a limited income. I had intended to upgrade my mac
mini, but (like most of the world) am very unhappy with the current
generation of minis. My other reasonably fast machine was set up as
as hackintosh, but was never quite stable enough. Hence my move to
linux Mint on that machine. I like Mint.<br>
<br>
Here is the tl;dr version: I am going with qtools even though I hate
C++.<br>
<br>
Moving to linux, I faced the problem of finding a workable gui
solution. When I inquired at my local Lisp users group, practically
all the young guys said "do a web interface". For various reasons I
really, really hate the idea that everything in the modern world
should be a web app.<br>
<br>
After some not very "scientific" investigation, I have committed to
attempting to use qtools (here: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://shinmera.github.io/qtools">http://shinmera.github.io/qtools</a>).<br>
<br>
I spent quite a lot of time investigating Ltk, and various gtk
bindings. Actually Ltk is pretty good in some ways (easy to get
started, fair documentation). But I don't like the look of it, and I
also don't really care for the architecture.<br>
<br>
I would have preferred gtk (because C), but there is a lot of
criticism of the way gtk has evolved at the hands of its development
team. (See this, for example:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0</a>). Also there appears to
be a reasonable chance that my apps will run on all three of linux,
windows, and OS X with qt, although I don't really know about ccl on
windows.<br>
<br>
I have the same problem with qtools, commonqt etc. as I had with the
cocoa bindings in ccl. (This may just be my idiosyncracy, whatever.)
That is, I don't feel comfortable using either one without a fairly
good knowledge of the "natural ecosystems" these things live in,
i.e. Obj-C and C++. I spent quite a long time getting a kind of
minimal knowledge of Obj-C, and didn't mind it too much. I have
spent the best part of the past month learning C++ and Qt in the C++
environment. I just <i>hate</i> C++, so it is a struggle. But Qt
itself is pretty good. I have even found myself using the qt IDE (qt
creator) in preference to emacs for C++ and C work. This is a kind
of milestone for me; I was ok with xcode but am really most
comfortable with emacs.)<br>
<br>
The problem with all of these things in the CL world (and also in,
e.g. Haskell, which I like) is that despite the best intentions of
the developers (often one guy), they/he/shee inevitably move on to
other things. To me that means that one must pretty much face up to
debugging and maintaining the software largely on one's own. (Maybe
not so much the case with cocoa + ccl, which seems to have a
somewhat better life expectancy.) Hence my dive into C++.<br>
<br>
This is a problem for anyone (like me) whose primary interest is <i>not</i>
development tools. However, I have for the time being decided that I
simply cannot give up either CL or non-web gui, and so I will bite
the bullet. <br>
<br>
As for hating C++, I am not the least doctrinaire about programming
languages. I generally accept that a language is a good one if
people manage to produce stuff I like or find useful in that
language. However, i have returned to C++ for the first time since I
bought the first edition of Soustrup's book in 1985. I was repelled
by the language then, and still think it is just an unholy mess.
When I give myself a break from qt and C++ to do some lisp, it feels
marvellous. So it remains to be seen whether my <i>resolve</i> will
<i>dissolve</i>, LOL.<br>
</body>
</html>