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Best Language For Experimental GUI Demo Projects?
New submitter GrantRobertson writes with a question about quickly developing prototypes for new interface design concepts "My research/tinkering will be along two main lines: (1) Devising entirely new graphical user interface elements, mostly in 2D, though often in a true or simulated 3-D space. I am working on ways to visualize, navigate, and manipulate very, VERY large data-sets of academic research information. (2) Computer based education software, though of a type never seen before. This will combine some of the GUI elements invented in (1) as well as displaying standard HTML or HTML5 content via a browser engine My requirements are: (A) A decent IDE ecosystem; (B) A decent set of libraries, but ones that don't lock me in to a particular mind-set like Swing does in Java. (Boxes in boxes in boxes, Oh My!); (C) An ability to easily draw what I want, where I want and make any surface of that 3D object become a source for capturing events; (D) Ease of cross-platform use. (So others can easily look at my examples and run with them.); (E) No impediments to open-source licensing my code or for others to go commercial with it either (as I have seen when I looked into Qt). So, should I just stick with Java and start looking outside the box for GUI toolkits? Or is there something else out there I should be looking at?"
I'm not sure what impediments Qt has to proprietization of software since it's LGPL nowadays; in any case, Qt Quick and GNOME's Clutter seem like they could be a useful. Read on for more context.
"I am not a professional software developer and never have any aspirations to become one. I've been through a generic university computer science degree-program and I can tolerate C++ begrudgingly. I do OK with Java and prefer it, though I still have to look up every API before I use it. Most of the code I want to write will be not much more than prototypes or proof of concept stuff for the research I will be doing, rather than full-on applications ready for distribution and use. I can learn any language out there, if need be, but these days it is more about the ecosystem than the core language. IDEs, libraries, cross-platform compatibility, user support, open source licensing."
I'd be tempted to do it in English, but, given current demographic patterns, Chinese may be better in the long run...
Im sort of in the same boat (Graphic Designer with aspirations to be a UI/UX designer) and am learning to code of my own accord. I've had much success with Processing. It's really easy to get started and get functional code running. Also, you can run your processing files on a webpage with Java or Processing.js. I don't know about the large data sets you're dealing with, but since Processing is java based, I assume there won't be much difficulty
I don't always write GUIs, but when I do, I prefer wx. But in all seriousness - I hate writing GUIs. I write embedded C for a living and am lost when it comes to the differences between window manager(s) on Linux or Windows or whatever. When I need to whip something up quick (and it's not embedded, and we're not going to sell it) sometimes I switch over to Python, and if that quick thing needs a GUI, wxPython (the port of wxWidgets from C to python) is something you can tack on there with minimum hassle. If you need a portion to be fast for your math calcs or whatever you can write that part in C. There's a boatload of tutorials via google (and youTube).
Well, Nokia open sourced Qt under the LGPL 2-3 years ago. I am a Nokia systems engineer. We are still the primary maintainers, but we are committed to keeping it that way (open source), and with the current moves of the company toward Windows Mobile on our high-end phones, we may well be considering pushing it out to the community entirely, but with some resources still assigned to it. I don't know for sure, but I'll try to find out what the plans are for it. Qt is an important part of our Meego and Symbian phones, which are still popular and getting a few new models. My own company phone is an N8 Symbian device.
A GUI in Visual Basic. I hear its good for this internetz stuff.
As someone with experience with just about every major programming language. I'd seriously consider Javascript. Rather than "Embedding" something to render HTML, embed your special sauce in an HTML5 Canvas. Specifically consider writing it as a Chrome App. Not only will it be fast you'll automatically have a standard platform to release your work onto, no installer, no pain in pushing out updates as your work evolves.
See some examples here: http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/21-ridiculously-impressive-html5-canvas-experiments/
JSON is becoming the defacto data interchange format used by just about all web services and Javascript can also be used on the backend via node.js. You or anyone you're working with can easily learn javascript from places like http://www.codecademy.com/. Plenty of IDE support, but Chrome itself provides excellent debugging tools via "Inspection" and a javascript console which can be used as a rapid prototyping shell.
As an added bonus, javascript provides the best of both functional and object oriented programming, and just about every decent programmer knows javascript or can learn it easily.
really? based on those requirements, i think origami would be a bit much for him.
The project might fold.
Python Matplotlib covers some of what you might be interested in and it can be used with other GUI toolkits see http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib and http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/ - at the very minimum it might provide some food for thought about the feature-set you're seeking.
I'd use [software environment and platform here] ...
No. Just use paper and pencil. Create a story board, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_board, showing how the user will use the interface.
Go to the academics that represent your users. Ask them what they want to see in a visualization, how they expect to do a search, how they expect to manipulate things. Give them paper and pencil and tell them to just draw things however they think it should be, not what they are used to seeing in their current environment and applications, rather whatever they can imagine would be a good way, a way that feels natural.