Standards not standard

[Mike Meyer]

Dark Cowherd <darkcowherd at gmail.com> writes:
> Being able to write a usable GUI is key task for all programmers today

No, it isn't. I'm a programmer. I never get paid to write usable
GUIs. Most of my programs don't have a GUI at all. For those that do,
I get paid to write a functional GUI. Clients that want a usable GUI
are told up front they'll have to pay someone else - who may not be a
programmer - to provide that.  If you said "most" - well, I still
don't think I'd agree with you, but at I wouldn't have so directly
disagreed. The team I'm currently working on has about a half dozen
programmers, only one of whom needs to be able to write a usable GUI.

Now, when it comes to writing tools for me, I've written some things
that have what I consider to be *very* usable GUIs - much more usable
than anything I've ever seen on a Mac or Windows box. But gods forbid
end users should ever have to deal with them.

> You can for example tie a dataset with a chart and grid on the same
> screen. Type in the grid and see the chart change. All this with zero
> code. Made my eyes bug out the first time I saw this.

PyQt has this kind of functionality. I first saw it in boopsie, back
in the late 80s. It is pretty cool.

> I really think that the community needs a lot more of STANDARDS not
> a STANDARD GUI

Standards happen in one of two ways. Either an 800-lb gorrilla
establishes them by fiat, or a group of people interested in having
their code play well together hashes out something after they've all
taken a crack at implementing it. The latter is slowly happening in
the Python community. But it's a slow process.

    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.