Comment by gwd
6 years ago
This is an amazing effort, but I think...
> Well, here we are, we are shipping with GNOME / GTK+
...this point is I think quite unfortunate. I tried to write a GTK+ program a few years ago and it was completely impossible. Using GNOME / GTK+ will surely limit its attractiveness of a development platform. It's too bad they couldn't have done something based on Qt instead.
EDIT: Rather than downvoting, why don't you post your contrary experience with GTK+?
I can see why GTK would be a good choice, it has lots of bindings, and gnomes style guide is pretty well suited to enjoyable phone sized experience.
My experience with GTK has been fine its been far from impossible to use - with python, rust, and C. At least on linux, but that is the context of the issue.
Plasma mobile exists and apps will use QT so we can see how both turn out.
I think you're being downvoted due to the broad, unsubstantiated, statement that it's impossible to write code with gtk. It's obvious that gtk is a very successful platform. If you want to make such an extraordinary claim, the burden of proof is on you. It requires more than "I tried to write an app a few years ago"
Thank you for the explanation. It's not so much that I don't understand why I'm being downvoted, or even complain about it per se; it's just that it's not terribly informative, either for me, or to anyone reading.
Strictly speaking, everything I wrote was about my own personal opinions and experience. I did try writing an app; I did find trying to figure out was was going on impossible (and switching to web development much more fruitful). So it's natural for me to think that lots of people will have similar experiences, and that if they do, it will limit the growth of the platform.
I knew that what I wrote might be controversial, and I'm willing to take my downvotes like a man. But I'd rather be shown other perspectives.
I have several gtk apps in progress for the phone. If you tried a few years ago then i understand the sentiment. It could still be much better, especially when it comes to documentation. That said it’s pretty easy to get a basic app started and even ready to distribute with the gnome builder ide. It has a wysiwig for ui and project templates for all the most popular supported languages. The flatpak support is great too. The people working on it must be machines with the pace they are making improvements.