On 14 September 2014 18:54, kilon alios <kilon.al...@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 ======================= http://devblog.brahmancreations.com