Comparison of platforms

[WillPittenger]

There are a variety of computer languages we could use, some of which have multiple options for how to implement a GUI. These are listed below with the advantages and disadvantages of each. In the list, if a GUI platform is listed as "lightweight", that means the platform doesn't require native OS controls to be made for anything other than top-level windows. Otherwise, each window has its own control on the OS level.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Various Computer Languages

Language	Advantages	Disadvantages	GUI Platforms Supported	At least one developer in the organization has coded with this
C++	Been around for decades Has managed to keep up to date Multiple derivation supported, including classes C++.NET is available if you use MS compilers and adds some specialized features, but forces you to put up with the support disadvantages associated with C#	Updates are limited MS extensions Declarations and implementations are separate source files No requirement exceptions be caught or declared	WxWidgets WPF Windows Forms Qt GTK	✓* *Experience is out of date
C♯	Lots of syntax candy to make coding faster Much of .NET is written in this Generics types and methods are encoded as such with each expansion getting its own copy Each class needs only one source file, but each source file can contain several related classes	Best support is on Window as Linux/MacOS/BSD support requires Wine and Mono which might not yet support the latest.NET versions Classes can be derived from multiple interfaces, but only one class No requirement exceptions be caught or declared	WPF Windows Forms Qt (via QtSharp) GTK (via GTK#) WxWidgets (via Wx.NET)	✓
Java	If code runs into the possibility of an exception, that exception’s type must be either declared by the enclosing function/method or caught by that function/method Only one source file is needed per class	Type erasure makes generics hard to work with Only one class per source file Package system is harder to code with than the namespace system in C++ and C♯	Swing wxWidgets (via wx4j)	✓
Perl			WxWidgets (via wxPerl) Prima Qt (via either Perl/Qt or Perl/KDE) GTK (via gtk2-perl)	✓

Advantages and Disadvantages of Various GUI Platforms

GUI Platform	Bindings Available	Advantages	Disadvantages	At least one developer in the organization has developed for this
GTK	C++, C♯ (requires GTK#), Perl (requires gtk-perl)	Works best on Linux systems using the Gnome desktop or forks thereof Look somewhat customizable	Customizing the look only really works on Linux as you otherwise have to edit text files by hand and manually install the  styles Heavyweight API is actually straight C with the SDKs being wrapper classes	🚫
Qt	C++, C♯ (requires QtSharp), Perl (requires either Perl/Qt or Perl/KDE)	Works best on Linux systems developed to use the KDE desktop or forks thereof Look somewhat customizable	Customizing the look only really works on Linux as you otherwise have to edit text files by hand and manually install the  styles Heavyweight	🚫
Windows Presentation Framework (WPF)	C++.NET (requires a MS compiler), C♯	Lightweight Can be styled Window layout is done via an XML specification called XAML	Providing the user with a choice of styles isn’t easy No counterpart to CSS as styles are specified with the layout	✓
Windows Forms	C++.NET (requires a MS compiler), C♯	Mature Look somewhat customizable	No built-in ability to mimic the OS look as it predates the dark theme option built into newer versions of Windows No longer developed by MS Much of the time, this is a thin  wrapper around the ancient straight C API that’s been in Windows since the 1990s	✓
Swing	Java	Like Java, your code quickly runs everywhere Some ability to be styled Lightweight	Only available in Java Java Swing comes with a few styles, but those might not mimic modern OSes.	✓
wxWidgets	C++, C# (via Wx.NET), Perl (via wxPerl), Java (via wx4j)			🚫
Prima	Perl

In the list above, a “lightweight” component doesn’t rely on the OS to provide or paint controls other than the top-level windows.  Things like buttons are handled entirely by the GUI platform.  In a “heavyweight platform”, the OS knows about all controls.  Lightweight systems use fewer resources, but aren’t as good at mimicking the look the OS is using for itself.  In general, a lightweight system is better overall.  Hence, in the list above, those got bonus points.

Those are the main ones I know of. If you want to add to this list or have other comments, please reply.