A week or two ago I started a thread suggesting that JavaScript might be
an interesting "VM" for D to target for web apps. A thriving discussion
ensured and it was a delight to read the opinions posted by many on this
newsgroup.
The idea came out of a frustration I had with having to develop a rather
complex application using browser-only technology, JavaScript being
somewhat awkward to deal with the task at hand. In the process of
pondering the scalability of the programming task I looked to many
different ways of circumventing programming plain old JavaScript and
considered such things as Haxe, Cappuccino (Objective-J) and SproutCore.
Then it occurred to me everything I liked about D and had this fairy
wish that D might be ideal for client side programming down to JS.
Since then, my client has gone completely off web apps for this
particular Linux-embedded hand-held mobile device and has mandated that
the apps will now be written as desktop apps in Qt.
Qt, as many of you will know, is a C++ GUI framework produced by
formerly TrollTech and now acquired by Nokia for $xxx million (60 or
160M I read somewhere). So Nokia pays megabucks for a GUI framework
that is C++ at its core. Questions are, why is Qt worth so much to
Nokia, why is Qt so damn popular on the Linux platform and what is the
secret of Qt's success given that it is basically a C++ framework
wrapped in some "meta-object compiler"?
Having now been exposed to Qt for a few weeks and beginning to
understand its architecture of "signals and slots" and a pre-processor
that compiles down to C++, I am now wondering whether D is powerful
enough to achieve the same sorts of things that Qt seems to be doing.
If I understand correctly, Qt brings a degree of "reflection capability"
to C++ amongst other things. Qt does a tremendous job of circumventing
the gaps in plain old C++ to achieve great goodness for GUI development
by way of its meta-object compiler.
May I ask if others on this NG are across Qt and D might be capable of
slotting into some of this market for cross-platform GUI development.
As always, discussions such as these can go anywhere and everywhere on
DigitalMars D NG, and that's much of the joy in staying with this NG if
only as a bystander at times.
Cheers and best regards to all,
Justin Johansson
