Windows and Mac OS X are the only sane alternatives for developers that care about desktop applications and developer friendly toolchains. Same applies to iOS, Android and WP.
The other alternatives feel like only the CLI and daemons matter, stuck in a PDP-11 view of the world.
Then again, NeXT was the only UNIX based OS with an alternative culture regarding developers tools and UX.
KDE is the only environment that can match in terms of tooling and UX, yet it is lacking some serious love nowadays.
I want my developer and user experience to be a Xerox Star and not a PDP-11.
KDE? Seriously? It's one of the worst DEs on linux. Any DE which isn't based on gnome is just cheap nowadays.
I'll take your hot opinion and replace it with mine: Gnome (3) is hands down the worst DE in the entire Linux ecosystem and is actively harming all others by merely existing due to the mentality driving its development: "fuck everyone that's not us, we set the standards and you will like them".
Currently KDE is the most polished and feature complete of the "batteries included" DEs. And even then as a developer I prefer a bare-bones tiling set-up, picking and choosing what I want and having an experience customized to my preferred workflow.
GNOME has a very nice HIG from UX point of view, but it is stuck in C + POSIX as technology stack in what concerns developer experience. Vala is still not there and I don't believe in JavaScript for native UIs.
Same or similar? It doesn't matter what they provide because I'd go with ScalaFX(http://www.scalafx.org/) + IntelliJ or Vala|Genie + Vala IDE. Mono is also an option if you're into it.
> but it is stuck in C + POSIX as technology stack in what concerns developer experience.
Yes, GTK isn't the newest but it isn't hard at all to develop apps with Vala/Genie(https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala/GTKSample , https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Genie/GtkGuiTutorial ?)
> Vala is still not there and I don't believe in JavaScript for native UIs.
What do you mean? Vala is almost the defacto standard language for ubuntu/gnome apps.
I can use the same toolchain in many other operating systems.
The last time I bothered to check GNOME, there was some ongoing discussion of JavaScript becoming the official language to pair with C.
Just checked Genie and Vala IDE web sites, they still need to do catch up with what Borland was doing in the 90's, let alone modern IDEs.
Why would you need specific features? You wanted to develop desktop apps, not gnome plugins, right?
> Just checked Genie and Vala IDE web sites, they still need to do catch up with what Borland was doing in the 90's, let alone modern IDEs.
If you want RAD there's Glade(https://glade.gnome.org/) + GtkBuilder.
Desktop apps that expose the features that make the platform unique.
> If you want RAD there's Glade(https://glade.gnome.org/) + GtkBuilder.
Not even close to Delphi and C++ Builder and we are talking about 90's here.
If I upgame to Blend + VS, XCode + Playgrounds, Android Studio then there is a lot of catch up to do.
Software development stack for desktop apps are all about exposing the features that make a platform desired to be used.
> So which other DE on GNU/Linux does provide the same tooling and platform abstractions as KDevelop/Qt Creator do?
You answered:
> Why would you need specific features? You wanted to develop desktop apps, not gnome plugins, right?
Clearly KDevelop and At Creator expose GNU/Linux specific feature.