Re:Writing GUI Apps Using the Red Programming Language
by girvo on Sunday December 24, 2017 @05:02PM
(#16001522)
Agreed re. JavaScript, which is why I use Reason (ReasonML if you want to google it) with React and ReactNative. Ocaml but with a syntax that’s easier for my team to swallow, compiles to JS. The Bucklescript team deserves all the nice things in life for their amazing work!
Kivy is looking to have good principles, but the standard UI kit is quite awful. Supports popular targets except for the web. Qt quick (controls) enables both a good desktop feel and an aright one on mobile platforms. Doesn't support the web (but PureQML is an effort to port the language).
Haxe looks promising but public adoption, for some reason, seems very slim. Adobe Air and things like that promise similar things, but example apps are complete garbage.
React Native works quite well on mobile. There could probably be a similar effort on the desktop, it's surely possible to do something - but then again I'm not a huge fan of javascript either.
I have started doing projects in a browser myself because it is so easy to get started and share what you made, so I can understand that people would want to just use the work they did and bundle it up for shipping. It just looks like something could be done for Electron to lose some weight, at least. Why does it require a Nodejs environment and a browser for every app? Why not adopt the browser model of feeding apps into one renderer for display? Things like that. Maybe they'll wake up some day.