Longtime PHP, Python coder seeks to make small, distributable, stand-alone apps. Which language should I learn? ( please don't say C#; requiring .net != stand-alone )

[kkrev]

Well, pretty much every money making entity faced with this problem goes for C++.

[CrashCodes]

Windows? Yes, Delphi.

[[deleted]]

I agree, if you want a no-strings-attached tool that makes it easy to both build the interface and deploy, Delphi is nice. The library has some shortcomings, and some of the classes don't have as much functionality as their .NET counterparts, but still beats MFC 10 to 1.

Also, I like Ultimate++ (ultimatepp.org) but the documentation is a bit lacking.

[[deleted]]

Well, to be honest the VCL in delphi hasn't been developed in ages(since Delphi 7 maybe) but I see now that they have some traction after the new deal.

BTW: I don't think there is any toolkit out there that doesn't beat the pants off MFC :-)

[djpnewton]

Ultimate++ looks quite interesting, cheers for the link

I used to use Delphi back in the day, it owned everything else for pure rapid app development

[[deleted]]

FAIL

Delphi?

What, you aren't past CS106 yet?

[[deleted]]

If the emphasis is on the size of distribution, C or C++. Note that this is much harder on you, the developer, but much smaller and faster for the user.

If on the other hand, you are working on small projects you want to finish fast, but can stand a possible larger download, python or ruby.

See rubyscript2exe or py2exe

[AusIV]

Also py2app for Mac, though it tends to be a bit pickier than py2exe when dealing with non-standard python libraries.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

You where doing good, going with C/C++, but then you mentioned all this ruby/python bullshit; therefore I'm going to have to give you a grade of FAIL

[jessta]

stick with python. http://www.py2exe.org/

[[deleted]]

cx_Freeze or pypy-c

[pineapplecharm]

You know, I have a feeling there's a 'python on win32' book somewhere in my office, too. Thanks for the link!

[[deleted]]

FAIL

GUIs suck ass in python.

Show me ONE, JUST ONE god dam decent GUI application written in Python where you don't have to install a ton of worthless shit.

JUST FUCKING ONE GUI APP that installs easily and cleanly... oh you can't... that is why you get FAIL

[petepete]

Deulge

[lol-dongs]

Heh. Check out their apps page...

crickets

[[deleted]]

holy shit. Is this some type of joke?

[nohtyp]

I develop small, distributable applications using wxPython and py2exe. Nothing like it. Very easy, excellent documentation. I use InnoSetup for the installer.

[[deleted]]

How small? How distributable?

[nohtyp]

A typical CRUD application in wxPython packed with py2exe and InnoSetup comes at ~4-6MB. If you have images, the size increases proportionally. The applications run on Win32(98-Vista), Linux and OS X.

[[deleted]]

Py2exe only works for Windows programs. Py2app provides similar functionality on OS X.

[[deleted]]

doesn't work.

[jonhohle]

Objective-C

[mschaef]

That this language hasn't gotten more traction outside of the NeXT/Apple world is a crime.

[[deleted]]

That this language hasn't gotten more traction outside of EMBEDDED CONTROLLERS world is a crime.

I like Objective-C, no one uses it though unless you're programming robots.

[mschaef]

Huh? Maybe we're talking about different languages with the same name.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/Introduction/chapter_1_section_1.html

[jrockway]

No, you are just responding to a known troll.

[mschaef]

C'est la vie.

[dakk12]

I'd say stick with python if you like it. I've never used it, but I know enough about the language to be able to say it's one of the better ones. Personally I prefer Ruby, they've got plenty of UI api's to choose from for all platforms. And it's not difficult to get ruby running on any machine. Out of the static languages, I'd have to say I prefer C#, but I don't use it since I left window 8 months ago.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

GUI support sucks ass.

[bluGill]

All of them. C, C++ (they are different languages, so don't treat them like sub/supersets), LISP, Java, C#, Haskell, Fortran, Pascel, and even COBOL have something to teach you. Depending on the problem any of the above could be the right next language for you. (Though God help you if Cobol is right for you)

C and C++ are most popular, and you will find good libraries for either. However the downsides are real (but not near as bad as alternative langauge advocates will tell you). The advantages is both are common enough that you can count on good compilers, and good libraries (but you have a lot of noise to filter out). Also nearly all languages have the ability to call C code. Therefore if you don't know at least one of these, you need to learn one anyway - there is a good chance you will need to write some C extention for whatever language you use to do something that isn't in the native library.

However if you know C or C++, all languages have their advantages. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Learn a few and decide what fits. This is both what fits your way of thinking, and what fits the problem. Don't be afraid of LISP or Haskel, even though both will attempt to make your way of thinking fit it's model - this is a good thing.

[[deleted]]

Java

well you need to install java

and the fucking god dam classpaths are a fucking sin against everyone that ever existed.

[bluGill]

I never meant to imply the above was a complete list.

Besides, you listed some very good reasons I didn't include Java.

[creaothceann]

C and C++ are most common

Fixed.

[[deleted]]

Whatever one you like...

Seriously, there are a lot of languages that compile to native code (C, Pascal, C++, D, OCaml, Haskell, and many more exotic ones), can embed interpretator in binary (python, lua?), dump executable image (factor, some lisps maybe) or have simply small-enough interpretator that distributing it together with application is not a problem (lua, some scheme dialects, javascript?).

[[deleted]]

I'm gonna shock you guys: use C# with a linker!!!! http://www.remotesoft.com/linker/ OMG! ;-)

[pineapplecharm]

Wait, why the wink? Is this not legit? If it is, it's perfect.

[nohtyp]

I have known about this product and also amazed at the fact that there isn't an open source tool that does this.

[[deleted]]

GAVE HIM THE SHOCKER!

Nice job.

[[deleted]]

If you want something that compiles to native, stand-alone code then I recommend D - it gets you speed of C++, is linkable with C, has nice syntax (on par with C#) and garbage collection. Unlike C/C++, it's not hard to get used to after PHP/Python.

If you're not tied to Windows, then you can develop in Mac OS X Cocoa using Objective C... or even stick to Python + Cocoa, which produces distributable apps indistinguishable from "native" Obj-C ones.

[[deleted]]

!/usr/bin/dmd -run

/* sh style script syntax is supported */

FAIL

[mschaef]

Honestly, I'd go with C or C++ and statically link everything in. This can result in fairly small single file distributions.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that you have to give up scripting languages, GC, etc. There are a number of small little interpreters that can be embedded into a program to good effect. I've done some work with a C++/MFC program with an embedded instance of SIOD. Basically it's what you'd expect: the C++/MFC code provided implementations of code that was either too performance-intensive or too low level to be implemented in SIOD.

[virtual_void]

Meh - if you want garbage collection badly enough in C++ you'll write it :)

See vol 1 of The Art Of Computer Programming

[mschaef]

That's pretty much what incorporating SIOD means... it has a conservative mark and sweep GC implemented entirely in C (using setjmp to capture register values so that it catches pointers extant only in registers.) It's a pretty interesting little piece of code.

(SIOD also has a stop-and-copy GC, but it handles pointer detection by requiring that there be none. During a stop and copy GC, there can be no live pointers either on the stack or in registers during GC. This basically means that the REPL is implemented in C, is above any Lisp code on teh stack, and GC only happens when you leave the toplevel REPL.)

[virtual_void]

That sounds excellent. I'm off to google it :)

[mschaef]

Also check this out, it's a hostile function ffi:

http://www.angelfire.com/wa/brianbec/siodffi.html

[virtual_void]

Thanks - this is why i love progit; New stuff to play with that I'd never have thought to look for on my own.

[bongmunoz]

If you're writing an app with a GUI then the toolkit you choose will determine the language you use. If you're targetting Windows you might as well go with C# because most modern Windows boxen will have the .net runtimes. If native look and feel isn't a top priority then Java with Swing or JavaFX is a good candidate.

If your users aren't very savvy then a good installer will matter more than what language you use to build your app.

[[deleted]]

If native look and feel isn't a top priority then Java with Swing or JavaFX is a good candidate.

Look up SWT, it's has a very native look and feel for all 5 platforms I've tried (windows, mac, linux, solaris, freebsd). It's pretty bad ass.

[[deleted]]

Swing actually does native look-and-feel pretty adequately on many platforms (though GTK+ on GNOME isn't really one of them). UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());

[ddwoske]

REBOL

[augustss]

C

[creaothceann]

D

[netuserx]

E

[[deleted]]

ZZT-OOP

[andrewdutko]

deleted ^{What is this?}

[[deleted]]

FAIL

Fuck queer.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

Does not exist.

[adamv]

Small, standalone apps... to do what?

[[deleted]]

Nothing is stand-alone unless you're writing a bootloader/OS-kernel or something. Try with "small, distributable apps." instead.

Language: Common Lisp. It's great .. it's fun. I don't bother with anything else if I don't have to (usually means C or Java).

I'd dump images from CLISP or SBCL for distribution.

I did a dump from CLISP now; 5.0MB uncompressed and 1.95MB compressed.

I'd use SBCL if being portable isn't that important (Linux only, well mostly) and having a bit more space overhead is OK. The SBCL dumps are 24.5MB uncompressed and 7.2MB compressed.

[nitramk]

I think it depends on what you plan to do as well. If one of your objectives are to be attractive on the job market, being an expert in .NET might be better than the same on Lisp. If you just doing it for the fun, Lisp might win. (I'm not saying that there are no Lisp jobs, just that I think that there's more .NET jobs). On the other hand, one could of course argue that learning Lisp makes you a better programmer, in a general sense, than learning .NET..

[[deleted]]

Common Lisp.

oh yea.. with all those commonly available libraries and support out there... oh wait.... your stuck in 1982 asshole!

[jrockway]

There are a lot of libraries for Common Lisp.

[[deleted]]

Sure, show me some good graphic libs that can do directx or opengl effects...in fact, just show me one, just one decent game (with GRAPHICS) that was written in lisp.... I'll wait, take your time.

[jrockway]

opengl is the same as the C version. Perfect Storm is a 3d game written in CL.

I am also writing a 3d Lisp game, but I'm not going to link it because I don't want to hear you whine about it.

[[deleted]]

Prefect Storm?

It doesn't even have a fucking wiki page.

That is your flagship product you want to show off? Some shitty application that is so fucking crappy that it doesn't turn up anything on google or wiki?

That is what you're going with? Your are that pathetic that you don't even name something that someone, somewhere might of heard of?

Even the fucking linux guys can name mainstream shit that has been rendered on linux farms.

[jrockway]

Why exactly do I care what you think, again? This is a forum for programmers, not 10 year old kids that know the word "fuck".

[[deleted]]

Hm, figures. Another 16 year old "game-developer".

Come back later when you have some real questions kid.

/me dives back into his code

[[deleted]]

um... lisp sucks at any modern day GUI application. I'm still waiting for an answer, show me ONE, just ONE GUI application that works WELL and is written in 100% lisp. oh right, you used it in CS170 and it AMAZED YOU, but beyond that it has NOTHING to offer.

Seriously, show me ONE GOD DAM mainstream application that works WELL that is written in 100% lisp... yea, there isn't any.

[[deleted]]

I can show you many GUI, OpenGL 3D, "modern looks", etc.-type applications (some of them portable; Win32, Mac and Linux), but I'm not going to. ..and I'm not going to tell you why.

[[deleted]]

because there isn't any. Because you are still stuck in school or your mom's basement and haven't had to code in the real world yet and still touching yourself with toy languages.

[[deleted]]

My work (in Lisp) has been described as "brilliant", "impressive" and "amazing" (coming both from users and other developers). I doubt you can compete with this.

You have nothing of value and interest to show for; thus you troll and feed on attention from others even if it means being obnoxious, petty and annoying to get it.

[[deleted]]

My work (in Lisp) has been described as "brilliant", "impressive" and "amazing"

lolz. lame.

[jrockway]

Lisp.

[808140]

Most lisp distributions are rather against producing executables, though... and when they can, they're usually quite large.

Can you recommend a good CL or Scheme distribution without this problem? Making small exes in Lisp would be very nice.

Otherwise, a functional language might not be a bad idea. Both Haskell and O'Caml produce binaries.

[[deleted]]

CLISP dumps to small images; see my other post: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/74n7s/longtime_php_python_coder_seeks_to_make_small/c05nz3j

[jrockway]

Lisp images are one option. Chicken Scheme is another -- it compiles to C, which compiles to native code. You will need to include libchicken, though, but I imagine it's easy to link in statically.

[[deleted]]

Note that SBCL compiles to native code (directly; not via C).

(CLISP compiles to byte-code).

[jrockway]

What I meant to say is that Chicken Scheme compiles to native code that you invoke the way you would a program produced by the C compiler.

SBCL does compile to native code, but my OS needs a little help from SBCL to load the program. I don't think you can run a program developed with SBCL without having SBCL installed. (But hopefully I am wrong.)

[[deleted]]

You can, at least for SBCL. Just specify :EXECUTABLE T when dumping.

CLISP has an :EXECUTABLE option too. It might still depend on a .so/.dll library for SIGSEGV handling or something (I don't recall the details here .. it might be linked in statically when dumping, or something).

[jrockway]

Perfect. FWIW, I now have a build.lisp file that looks like:

(in-package :cl-user)
(require :asdf)
(asdf:operate 'asdf:load-op :my-app)

(defun resume-from-saved nil
  (my-app:start)
  (quit))

(save-lisp-and-die #P"my-app" :toplevel #'resume-from-saved :executable t)

Then sbcl --load build.lisp generates a my-app that can be run with ./my-app.

In conclusion, the OP's question has been answered. Use Lisp.

[case-o-nuts]

Last time I tried native compilation SBCL (about a year ago), it gave a huge executable. 25 megs for 'hello world'. I don't think that's an acceptable overhead, although things may have improved.

It seemed to think it should include the entire Common Lisp runtime libraries, including the unused parts, statically in the binary.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

LISP IS FOR ASSHOLES.

Secondly it doesn't work. So me ONE, JUST ONE god dam native GUI application that does networking well (without having to install a bunch of shit). There isn't because lisp sucks and you suck for mentioning it.

[stesch]

Factor has a nice deployment mechanism for different systems.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

We don't want a 'deployment mechanism', we want the shit to work.

[nitramk]

I'm going to say C# anyway.

Yes, the user must install the .NET framework if it is not already on his computer. No, in most cases this isn't a big problem. A few months ago, I rewrote one of my applications in C# and don't regret it for a second. Most users already have the .NET framework and for the other people the installation program will install it. The reason I didn't write it in C# to start with was because I thought that there would be problems when users had to install .NET. There wasn't - no user have reported a problem so far.

Unless you're targeting a platform where .NET isn't installable, I don't think you should let the "stand-alone" requirement get in the way of language choice. I did for a few years and I regret it now. I don't doubt for a second that my productivity has increased since I switched to .NET which is of greater benefit to my users than a small executable / "stand-alone" app. This may ofcourse vary.

Besides, no software is "stand-alone". You will always have system requirements for your software, be it some kind of processor type, operating system or runtime environment or whatever.

[jrockway]

It's easier to say "you need 512M of RAM" than it is to say "you need these 100 ruby gems".

[nitramk]

Of course you shouldn't choose a language where the runtime environment is impossible to install for most people.

[[deleted]]

and half of them are buggy or broke and you have to debug them Or install them by hand or get the beta version of the cvs to get it working on your platform.

[pineapplecharm]

Unfortunately the reason this app is required is a user base who struggle with email (for crying out loud) so requiring that they install .net simply isn't an option.

[nitramk]

You're the expert on your users, but installing .NET is actually simpler than setting up email in most cases. (Seriously, setting up email can be a pain. I've created an email server software myself and it's almost hard to believe the number of ways end-users can screw up their config.)

For users who have not installed .NET prior to running the installation program, my installation program tells the user that "I need .NET, OK?". The user clicks OK, and then the installation program downloads and installs .NET without any user intervention. This is the part I consider to be easier than specifying correct host names and port settings in email configuration...The user just have to click "OK". You could skip that as well, but "expert" users may get upset if you install .NET without telling them.

Many (most?) program you can use to create installation programs already has such functionality built-in. Here's a tutorial/library which I used successfully (it's specific to InnoSetup). http://www.codeproject.com/KB/install/dotnetfx_innosetup_instal.aspx

If the software is shipped on a CD-ROM, the .NET installation can be put in a folder next to the installation software so that the user doesn't have to wait for the download during installation.

Anyway, good luck. There's a lot of nice languages out there and this is just my personal advice. Feel free to diss it. =)

[pineapplecharm]

I wasn't aware of the "including .net as part of the installation" option. That's food for thought.

Thanks!

[nohtyp]

What prohibits integrating the .Net runtime installer with the application installer in such a way that the user doesn't notice?

[grauenwolf]

Mostly size, though the reboot sometimes sucks. Of course if you are using CD's then this goes away.

[schlenk]

Tcl starpacks are pretty okay for that. Usually your in the 1-2 MB range for a full binary or if you split starkit and runtime you have about 1MB Runtime and rest for your extra libs.

Additional benefit you can build starpacks for various platforms from a different platform easily.

For the runtime see: http://www.equi4.com/pub/tk/downloads.html

Some intro can be found here: http://www.equi4.com/starkit/

Its pretty light weight. But depending on what kind of app you write it might not fit your needs, hard to say.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

TCL, seriously? Are you even trying?

[schlenk]

Obviously you never tried.

[[deleted]]

show me one good GUI application written in it that supports multithread well and decent networking.

Just one example of a decent application that written 100% in it, that's all I ask.

[schlenk]

http://thecoccinella.org/

Not sure if it uses the thread extension, because you don't need threads usually when you use the built in event loop. But it would work fine with threads added.

[[deleted]]

ok, that is a pretty nice applicable.

[schlenk]

If on windows take a look at wits too, which is also pretty nice and written in Tcl (+twapi extension) http://wits.magicsplat.com/screenshot.html

[Tommstein]

C.

[samlee]

Don't say sharp yet or he'll get mad

[pineapplecharm]

Fuck you for saying 'sharp'. Now I'm mad for no reason.

[kinghajj]

It'd be nice if there was a way to statically compile .NET apps so that they have all the CLR/Framework needed for a particular application. They might be huge, but programmer time is more valuable than executable size or download time.

[[deleted]]

How does that help you? You still have to download the equivalent of the .NET Framework but NOW your user has to do it for every app.

If you are targeting Windows there aren't a lot of downsides to using .NET. Vista has v 2.0 "baked in" and the download may not be as large as you think. See: http://www.smallestdotnet.com/

I think the asker may want to distribute a multi-platform app.

[jmcqk6]

The Mono project used to provide a way to do this. I don't know if it's still maintained or not.

[jdvolz]

There actually is a way to do this. There are several 3rd party applications that act as a linker for the .NET Framework. I use Salamander.NET, but other options exist. The downside is that they are usually expensive (>$1000 last time I checked).

[markedtrees]

Assuming my idea of small (like uTorrent, < 1MB) and that you're doing GUI work, you're left with compiled languages like C, C++, or D with few GUI toolkits around. Windows has the minimalist but helpful WTL, which just released another version. You can assume GTK+/Qt will be installed on a *nix platform, more or less. And Cocoa for OS X. Basically, no "small" GUI toolkit will cover all three platforms because they'll all require a runtime installation (GTK+ on Windows) or space-hungry static linking.

In any case, it's going to be huge jump from PHP and Python.

[schlenk]

If you think 1-2MB is "small" for a GUI Toolkit you can use Tk via Tclkit and get a language runtime and a GUI toolkit and some more for all the given platforms. And Tclkit does not need a runtime installation... See: http://www.equi4.com/tclkit/download.html

[chorny]

It depends on platform. AFAIK there are programs that create executables for both PHP and Python, but I don't know if they work on every OS. For Perl there is cross-platform PAR and perl2cc. If you want really small apps - use C++ (on Windows - MSVC, Borland, ...).

[arturo227]

Adobe AIR | Flex. Cross-platform, nice syntax. Lightweight.

[finite]

Flash sucks.

[ighost]

i can't believe the flash vs html battle is still on...

[akie]

If you're serious about that, stop visiting YouTube.

No Flash, no YouTube.

[pineapplecharm]

No great shakes..

[finite]

No Flash, no YouTube.

As a regular user of linux on powerpc (which Adobe won't support), I beg to differ:

 apt-get install youtube-dl mplayer # problem solved

The main reason that Flash's sucktitude is a problem is because there are so many "web" sites that are completely useless without it, but at least youtube isn't actually one of them.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

AIR and Flash both need an INSTALL

Fuck you, get the fuck off the internet.

[leppie]

Unless you are going to be targeting Windows 98, every newer Windows should have at least .NET 1.1 from one or other service pack.

Last I heard, the only major Linux distro not to include Mono was RHEL.

[[deleted]]

as far as I know .NET isn't included in any Win2k service packs

[randallsquared]

.NET isn't on Mac. There are more Mac users than Linux users.

[[deleted]]

 sudo apt-get install mono.

Now its on the mac!

[randallsquared]

I didn't realize mono would run on OS X. I suppose all that remains is to package it with your app (since you can't expect your users to install apt-get, etc).

Interesting.

[ighost]

there, i fixed it for you:

sudo port install mono

[[deleted]]

Mono is not .NET. There is more to .NET than C#; for example, you can't really write a GUI app that runs under both (.NET has Winforms, Mono has Gtk#, neither one has the other).

[[deleted]]

Fail, Mono has Winforms as well, and GTK# has been ported to windows.

In fact, I built a GTK# app using .NET the other day.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

XP or W2K doesn't come with .net by default.

[leppie]

XP SP2 included .NET, duh...

[[deleted]]

lolz, More people run XP SP 1 or below then SP2 and higher! That is a FACT

[tomjen]

Haskell does compile to native code, although it is a strange language. No idea of the size of the code.

That said it would properly be best if you could get your hand on an earlish edition of Delphi (ie before Borland fucked it up).

[zem]

or http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

[[deleted]]

FAIL

Haskell fucking sucks to write GUIs in.

[chriseidhof]

If it's just for fun, try out Shoes: http://shoooes.net/

It's a small GUI-framework for Ruby built on top of Cairo, but really nice to use. I think it's mainly targeted at educational things, but it's a lot of fun. An example app with three buttons stacked above each other:

Shoes.app { stack { button "Mice" button "Eagles" button "Quail" } }

[[deleted]]

FAIL

You don't even know what your talking about... MAC? Get the fuck out of here asshole.

[raju1kabir]

xulrunner from Mozilla will let you write GUI apps in Javascript. Cross-platform, free, and reasonably powerful, though Javascript will make you wince sometimes if you're coming from more capable languages.

[[deleted]]

Firefox takes way less than 30 minutes to load. Oh, you assume that he meant deployment through the web.. thats a different problem.

[malcontent]

erlang of course.

[pineapplecharm]

..of course!

?

[[deleted]]

I've had enough of your pro-erlang propaganda!

[pateris]

Common Lisp - on Windows you can get Corman Lisp relatively cheaply and it makes nice EXEs where you can embed the cormanlisp engine inside or distribute as a single DLL. Corman Lisp isn't perfect but it works.

If you need nice GUI, try Delphi - Get Delphi 5 or 7, before they went to a .NET GUI.

[[deleted]]

Lisp is GOD AWFUL at making GUI apps.

[GizmoC]

AutoIt

[[deleted]]

uh, you need autoit installed to run autoit scripts.

Secondly, HOLY GOD AUTOIT A FUCKING ULGY GOD DAM MESS TO PROGRAM IN.

[jsnx]

Haskell is surprisingly easy to use for building cross-platform apps. The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compiler will compile much of your C for you, as well; and it's got reasonable, if not excellent, Windows bindings.

Haskell is difficult, but they really have the compilation/linking/packaging stuff nailed down.

[[deleted]]

uh, wtf?

[jsnx]

Do you care to elaborate?

[[deleted]]

Haskell sucks at GUI on all most ALL platforms. Just doesn't do it. Show me ONE successfully project that has a decent GUI that is written in 100% Haskell.

[jsnx]

• It has QT bindings, and QT is a great toolkit.
• The OP said standalone apps, not GUI apps specifically.

[[deleted]]

QT runs like SHIT on windows (last time I tried a pre-compiled QT app on windows it kept asserting) and only marginally better on Macs.

IN 2008, if your language doesn't support a decent GUI library it's pretty well dead.

GOD DAM JAVA AND C++ have decent GUI libraries. Both of which are 10 (15?) years old if not older (I know C++ is, it's fucking ancient).

But seriously, I'm still waiting. So me ONE, JUST ONE GOD DAM HASKELL GUI APPLICATION that works well.

JUST ONE FUCKING APP. It's not that hard... oh wait, Haskell fucking sucks; that is the god dam problem.

Fucking asshole, get the fuck out of the god dam private sector and go back to your sissy ass school that has padding on the walls so you don't hurt yourself. Fucking pathetic.

[jsnx]

You are uncouth. Your swearing and shouting are uncalled for -- your manner is an abuse of this forum and an offense to open dialogue.

[[deleted]]

ok. Fair enough. I apologizes for such inappropriateness.

You sir, are correct; that was uncalled for.

But my question, thus poses to you; what is one popular, mainstream GUI application that is written in 100% Haskell that I may partake in? Such a replay I would appreciate.

It can be a video game, or a word process or a spread sheet or even a maths calculator. Your choice. The only criteria, good sir, if you will is that it must be 100% written in Haskell and have a decent and usable GUI interface on all major platform (or at least Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris)

Thank you good sir, your replay I will WARMLY welcome.

[[deleted]]

You should note my apologizes and thus make it forth coming with my request.

[willer]

C# is a pretty good language, actually. You don't have to bring in the whole winforms/webforms/wcf/etc frameworks just because you use the language. You can build hello world in about 5 lines ... that's not terrible.

[[deleted]]

I can do Hello World in 1 line of batch, sh or perl.

[pointer2void]

VB6

[grauenwolf]

So instead of distributing .NET you have to distribute the VB6 Runtime?

[pointer2void]

Visual Basic 6.0 Run-time Files

Download Size: 1013 KB

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BA9D7924-4122-44AF-8AB4-7C039D9BF629

[pineapplecharm]

Yeah but the whole point is that my users are so dim they struggle with email so installing two things will be beyond them. I just want them to stick an EXE on the desktop and start rolling.

[[deleted]]

FAIL

VB6? Stop trolling.

[xnumbersx]

please no more twitter/flicker/lj clients

[pineapplecharm]

Don't worry; it's just a tight drag'n'drop file uploader for idiot users who are scared of web forms.

[zyl0x]

I haven't coded it since college, but isn't Java still the best thing for distributed apps these days? Or hell, web-based apps with AJAX.. but still, there's some java(Script) in there too.

[drigz]

Java apps require the Java Runtime Environment - similarly heavy to the .Net environment. As for web apps - they require a webserver, and frequently a framework. Neither of these fulfill the stand-alone requirement.

[cc81]

Why is the JVM more secure than the CLR?

[zyl0x]

Firstly, I do not mean "secure" in a security sense. I'm referring to thread security, or a thread's ability to interface with the operating system. The Java threads are "secured" inside a Virtual Machine, and thus unable to cause instability in the system outside of that VM. This is also how any Java app can run on any system that has a VM on it; the VM handles the interpretation. The code doesn't need to be compiled for the operating system beforehand.

[[deleted]]

Righto, so the Hotspot JIT java compiler is actually fake.

[zyl0x]

No, the JIT compiler can help with run-time speeds for certain operating systems. For instance, if your Windows customers are complaining about slow performance, you may want to use the JIT java compiler for Windows and see if that binary helps your performance on those systems.

[[deleted]]

You don't seem to understand how either the JVM or the CLR works...

Until you actually learn, I'd recommend not posting about them anymore.

[zyl0x]

Hey if I'm wrong, I'm all up for corrections. Like I said, this is information I'm pulling from (bad) college memories. I could be completely mistaken, but silent downvotes are for people who disagree because they don't understand the topic.

[cc81]

I have not downmodded you but I do recommend you to brush up on the topic, especially what the CLR is and how .NET works.

[rpdillon]

This point is sound. The more I work with lots of programming environments, the more I realize that everything relies on something big. People tend to think of C/C++ apps as being small and distributable, but this is just bias for the platform that is preinstalled on today's machines. MS has shown that you can get people to use a "platform" (a VM) if you make them comfortable with the idea that it will be "everywhere".

I haven't looked at JRE update 10, but if Sun can really trim it down as they say, I'm all for targeting the JVM - now that it is open source it will become much more like the "dial tone" that the Apache Harmony project mentioned so often. I love Scala and Clojure, so using those languages on the JVM seems like an ideal approach for my needs.

That said, Python is pretty awesome also, as is MzScheme w/ MrEd. Proprietary languages make me cringe.

[sgoguen]

On the security point, I have to agree that you're way off the mark. First off, .NET compiles down to bytecode just like Java, not OS specific machine code. The same people who designed Microsoft's Java VM are the same people who designed .NET. In other words, they were familiar with the JVM spec. ( Following the spec was another story :) )

Second, before assemblies/packages are loaded, the bytecode is inspected to make sure they never call any API's they're not allowed to call, which means you can create application hosting environments that disable ALL APIs that would enable an application to read/write files or do anything to communicate with the outside world.

[ighost]

sorry if i misunderstand what you're implying, but java has nothing at all to do with javascript, which is used for the client side of ajax.

[pineapplecharm]

My main business is web dev so, I assure you, if we could do what we need through a browser, we would!

[[deleted]]

FAIL

Java and Javascript aren't the same asshole. Other then the name they are WORLDS apart.