The Worst API Ever Made

Re:The Worst API Ever Made by pjmlp on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @02:22AM (#36952953)

Then let me tell you that programming X Windows is even worse, from the point of view of someone that knows Windows since Windows 3.0, and learned it via Turbo Pascal for Windows and Turbo C++ manuals.

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Re:The Worst API Ever Made by jamesfmilne on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @03:48AM (#36953486)

X Windows at least has the "advantage" that you can download the code for Xlib or the Xorg server itself to see what's going on under the hood.

Although, you're going to have to be fairly proficient to get your head around that stuff too.

Agree that X11 has a dreadful API.

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Re:The Worst API Ever Made by pjmlp on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @04:18AM (#36953658)

Which wasn't necessarly how X Windows worked in commercial UNIX, so having the source code wasn't of much help.

And that O'reilly X Windows book series, The Definitive Guides to the X Window System, a "tiny" set of 8 books, only for the UI stack.

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Re:The Worst API Ever Made by arethuza on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:21AM (#36954691)

Its a been a while since I did any X development but as far as I recall as an application (client) developer you generally only needed to know about the client library you were using together with some lower level details from Xlib?

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Re:The Worst API Ever Made by pjmlp on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @08:08AM (#36954976)

Only if using something like Gtk+, which is mostly a cross-platform kind of approach anyway.

X Windows with the X Athena Widgets, or Motif, you better have all those books.

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