FWIW, Blender has its own UI toolkit. So, they designed their own thing. http://3dicc.com/ 's Terf runs on Cog + internal additions. I guess it shows that things can be done nicely when it comes to UIs. As for Java and UI toolkits, I've been programming in Swing very extensively at one point. Well, as always, when you get into something very specific, you dig into the code and see that the designers of Swing also ran into issues and under the cover, things aren't so neat and debugging event bubbling in these things (where then, there is suddenly *zero* doc) is much harder with Java than with Pharo. UI is always a can of worms. Look at all the moves from Microsoft with WinForms, Silverlight, WPF, ModernUI, and what else... I've done tons of Java and Java EE. Heck, I paid my bills for years doing that, including teaching other people on how to use it properly. Know what? I am now sick of Java. When can we focus on the real problem and not all of the scaffholding? Java is okay, Java has lots of APIs, Java covers a lot of ground. But I just can't stand its ways of writing 20x more code than needed. Pharo is fresh air. One can actually understand what's going on and not merely call APIs around without understanding what's going on inside. Is it frustrating at time, hell yes. But do I end up with better skill after that? You bet! And as for C and C++ for 3D graphics, coders do use premade engines these days, like Unreal, OGRE, or, Urho3D http://urho3d.github.io/about.html. That last one you can script ( http://urho3d.github.io/documentation/HEAD/_scripting.html). Whatever the choice or the path, it seems that massive work is needed to get something that works semi-decently out of the door. There is no silver bullet... I wish you find what you are looking for. All the best, Phil On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 11:29 PM, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't plan to do anything complicated with C++ just contribute bug fixes to blender and maybe add a few features here and there. Definetly not implementing a Smalltalk into it :D I am also interesting in improving my mathematical knowledge about 3d graphics. I am foremost a 3d artist, but I like the idea of customising my own tools. I would not design anything from scratch since there are already tons of open source projects. Designing my own Smalltalk is out of the question, I prefer small projects easy to do and realistic / practical.
Yeap I am aware of FP and Lazarus , I may play around them too but I will be facing the same problem I face with Pharo since they are not much popular either and has nothing that can compete with Blender for 3d graphics. I am not interested in commrecial Smalltalks from what I have seen Pharo looks better, maybe they have bigger libraries a bit more docs, but I dont think it would make much of a difference.
If you are serious about coding 3d and 2d graphics , in the end knowning C/C++ is a big plus since most of development happens in those languages.
I never said Smalltalk or Pharo is the wrong language for what I want to do , it was always a matter of tools and libraries.
I may do something crazy like create a parser from Pharo to C++ , I think that would be interesting and would allow me to use Pharo for coding Blender source. Not a complete parser just something simple that can turn basic pharo syntax to C++ syntax. I would definitely being interested in something like this. I think Slang already does that so I may look at it and do maybe a few modifications here and there .
I wonder if there are other parsers for Pharo to C++ , maybe a pettitparser template ?
I would love to keep using Pharo syntax and the IDE and even keep contributing to it if it could generate C++ code. Actually thank you for reminding me about Slang :)
On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 12:11 AM, vfclists . <vfclists@gmail.com> wrote:
On 14 September 2014 18:54, kilon alios <kilon.alios@gmail.com> wrote:
yes JAVA Swing comes with animation abilities , maybe you mean something more than that
http://youtu.be/I3usNR8JrEE?t=7m41s
before JAVA FX , Java had and still has Java2D. but I am no big fan of Java anyway.
Dont know what it means by "ahead of its time" but back in 1998 I was coding in Delphi 1996 with a rock solid and very powerful GUI API. Delphi was an extremely powerful IDE , even more powerful than Pharo and stil is, with very mature and well documented libraries.
Also if we talk about transparency animation this dates back to my days coding in DOS and C++.
QT is awesome from what I see and people I ask generally have a very positive opinion about it, certainly something I may learn but my decision to swift focus from Pharo to C/C++ is not just because I having hard time coding the things I want in Pharo, its also because it makes more sense for me to contribute to Blender since my biggest interest is 3d art and blender is what I use. So re-learning C/C++ will give me full access to Blender internals which has a lot more potential for me. But yeah most likely I will learn QT and OpenGL. Its also cool that QT also supports mobile devices and even web apps. Also QML allows for live coding.
I assume by 2-4 you mean full time developers. I don't know , personally I think you need more people because GUI APIs are a pain to maintain across platforms since OS define their own libraries and support.
Yeap I definitely agree that Pharo needs more people using it, the problem however is that unpopularity is a vicious circle. You don't have much documentation and mature libraries because of small community and not much more new people come because you don't have much documentation and mature libraries. The problem also is fragmentation each one wants to try his own ideas and rightly so they may not be interesting in contributing to existing libraries, etc etc. These problems are common for languages. But Pharo can only get better since its in capable hands and passionate people. I have saw Pharo only improve the past year I have been using it regularly (in my free time , part time) and the community is helpful and kind if you exclude a couple of incidents here and there .
About the web technology, personally I find he web is a big can of worms but a necessary evil, I always said that building pharo on top of amber would make more sense and would lift a great burden from the development of pharo. Sure pharo would inherit the problems of the web technologies and limitations but also its strengths and power and flexibility and pharo would not need to play this game of cat and mouse with other programming languages. It would at least solve the GUI API problem for Pharo and it would be a matter of mapping Spec on top of existing well documented and well tested and very powerful / flexible web technologies.
But thats up to the Pharo community , my opinion is not fact and my personal choice is not the choice of other people.
There is a saying that if you want something done, right you've got to do it yourself, and this means working harder at it. Stuff like that get's easier with the passage of time, but time is what you don't seem to have and you may not have enough collaborators in your project.
Seeing as you mentioned Delphi, you might consider the FreePascal/Lazarus combination and consider building a Smalltalk on top if it as you need a combination which gives the ease of an interpreter and live coding, together with the facility to get down to the metal when you need it. It also has the benefit of being crossplatform. C++ is really an insane language to attempt to do something like that in. The newer languages like Nimrod and Julia may be better, but they don't have the rich library set you need.
I've always felt that the design of Smalltalk/X offers a better foundation for the type of stuff you want to accomplish so long as you are willing to meet the conditions for using it for defense related and biotech purposes. You will find the going tough as even Jan Vrany is not working on it much.
All in all I would say Smalltalk is the right language for what you want to do, it is just that the free versions available don't match your exact needs, both in terms of libraries and level of mass adoption.
-- Frank Church
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