6 replies to this topic

[Chris Weimer]

Some people program for practical applications. From what I've seen in my own field (which is not comp. sci.), figuring out how things work on its most primal level has never been interesting to large swathes of people. How many people claim they enjoy writing (novels, poetry, short fiction, etc...), yet compare that to how many are interested in how the English language works on a linguistic level (even lower than grammatical level, which some pseudo-intellectuals like to stay at).

[WingedPanther]

I can review the source code of wxWidgets or GTK at my leisure, but it doesn't really help me USE those GUI libraries. I've studied enough that I think I understand most of the principles involved, but I'm a lot more interested in making practical applications than knowing how a widget works.

[Alexander]

x42 said:

I got interested in programming because I wanted to know how computers work, so that is why I wanted to learn low level stuff, I can't figure out what other reason someone would have for programming, yet no one seems to want to know how GUI libraries are written, why?

A method of practical programming is to study, and USE the GUI libraries. To master a language it is useful to know the low level aspects of such and get an understanding, this is how people sprout ideas off the code and go their own ways and make their own implementations. This is one of the key reasons why there is such a bredth of open source software libraries for so many things.

If you throw assembly at me, I'd wish to rather use a higher programming language for simplicity, but I wouldn't switch from assembly to another language on a project if it meant comprimise.

[Alexander]

x42 said:

then why don't programmers just use visual basic?, if all they want is to write a gui[...]

Portability.

[WingedPanther]

I tend to use Lazarus in situations where others would use VB. I get portability, and RAD.